ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIVE: It's Pepper Flavored (Patreon)

[A/N: Did I build backlog? No...I did not. Because this is a long chapter and action scenes with this many moving parts take a while to get right. But I did get eight to nine hours of sleep (a miracle) every night, and I worked on my outline, and we've halted the chapters getting delayed by days problem I hope. I expect to have the next one out right on schedule. Thank you so much for being patient through the day off, everybody!

Team Lists for Convenience:

Team Cottontail (only the official name in Lute's head)
0 wins, 2 losses - 10 members

S - Maricel - Shaper of Ground
S - Lucille - Strength Brute  (doesn't want to kill people)
S - Jeffy - Aqua Brute
A- Reinhard - Meister of Bow
A - Lexi - Meister of the Mind Writher
A - Haoyu - Dura Brute
A - Astrid - Morph Brute
A - Njeri - Shaper of Water
A - Everly - Adjuster (ice spells)
B - Alden - The One and Only Rabbit

Team Finlay/Jupiter/Tuyet (sorry Kon)
2 wins, 0 losses - 10 members

S - Finlay - Speed Brute
S - Jupiter - Shaper of Life (plants for now)
S - Tuyet - Meister of Darts
S- Konstantin - Adjuster
+ 6 A's

Team Vandy/Marsha
0 wins, 2 losses - 11 members

S- Vandy - Shaper of Sky
S - Marsha - Meister of (see this chapter for description)
A - Mehdi - Agility Brute
A - Winston - Speed Brute
A - unnamed - Shaper of Object
B- Max - Adjuster (zones)
+ 5 A's

Team Febri/Shrike
2 wins, 0 losses - 10 members ( I forgot there were 41 total students last week...it says it right on my class notes page multiple times. 42 got stuck in my head instead. I guess it really is the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?)

S - Febri - Agility Brute
S - Ignacio (Shrike) - Meister of Knives
A - Olive - Adjuster
A - Rebecca - Jumper Brute (made subclass name up herself, Alden has never heard of it)
A - Sanjay - class still unstated, rooted for Alden in the drinking game at the party
A - Søren - Shaper of Light
A- Heloísa - Strength Brute
+3  A's

Obstacle Order:

Track - 3 times around, hurdles are not traditional track hurdles but walls of varying heights
Pipe - it's bad to be stuck in here when a bunch of vegetation comes through
Fire Box - slightly larger than a shipping container, flames shoot out of the walls because that makes it more fun
Weights - differently shaped metric ton and half metric ton weights that must be carried across the floor and up a short ramp to be dropped into designated areas; they periodically reset
Rope Climb - all gyms need one
Swinging Bars - wheeee!
High Wall - 15 meters = approximately 50 feet
Water - get in there, Jeffy
?? - I know but you guys don't yet
Finish Line

* Each team has their own identical course that they are running at the same time.

************
************

Somewhere, in a different part of the universe, an Artonan child who’d been born at the same time as Alden Thorn was excited.

Maybe too excited.

“Stop.” Alden shook his head as he watched the Opposite stone on his desk glow a soft white for the fourth time in the past fifteen minutes. “You have to pay for those.”

He finished making note of his very first successful casting of the wordchain in his ledger, using the Palace of Unbreaking’s official name for it—My Body Becomes My Assistant—and admiring how awesome he was at drawing logograms when he had the chain on top of his enhanced dexterity. Then he placed his brush bristles-down in the cleaning divot on the cap of the ink bottle. The foggy crystal checker was still glowing.

Alden shut the ledger and picked up the stone.

I hope you’re surrounded by a bunch of other kids right now, he thought. And they saw your stone light up, and they’re all wildly impressed.

He also hoped the little enthusiast had been saving up the pleasant halves of these wordchains as a celebratory reply to Alden’s first message, or that they were baby wordchains of some kind. Otherwise they were piling up the debt fast.

Alden had muted his team’s conference call while he worked. They’d had it going all day, with people vanishing from it when needed and reappearing during their breaks to offer ideas or ask questions.

After tucking his ledger into his desk and his blinky checker into a pocket, he joined back in.

“All right,” he said, “last chance to decide if you want me to pick up anything for you. I’m heading to Wrightwares.”

“I want beef jerky.”

“He means do you need anything for gym, Jeffy!”

“But I do want it for gym. I always eat protein during our break.”

“If I see beef jerky at the Wright shop, I’ll get some,” said Alden. “I’ll check in once I get there.”

He muted them again so that they wouldn’t make him nervous. They’d been doing a lot of worrying and rehashing all afternoon. Some of them seemed to enjoy fretting, but he didn’t find it helpful.

When Alden emerged from his room, he found Lute sitting on the floor by the fireplace, working on some kind of craft project.

“I got the chain,” Alden said, gesturing to himself. “My shirt tag has been removed—with scissors this time—and my body has become my assistant.”

“Congratulations! As your tutor, I expect a World’s Greatest Teacher mug. By the way, I don’t think you can make a shirt fast enough for it to be useful on the course. Maybe with some practice…”

“A shirt?”

Lute held up a net tank top made out of purple yarn. “Isn’t it beautiful? This is just a test piece. You could do this same kind of thing with your cord, though. Give me ten more minutes, and it’ll be a floor-length dress. Even your ankles would be safe. From things larger than the holes in the net anyway.”

Alden stepped over to check it out. “It’s cool. I found a guy online who crochets paracord backpacks for people. But why are you in here designing theoretical armor for me?”

“Because it’s much more interesting than my homework. And I couldn’t think of anything else fun to do to help the team. Although I’m sure if I could get my hands on the whip…”

“Kon hasn’t even gotten his hands on it.”

“I’m sneakier than Kon.” Lute threw the tank top on over his shirt. “How do I look?”

Alden took in the hastily made purple net. “Mmmm…do you want to come to the Wright shop with me?”

Lute looked down at himself. “It’s so bad you won’t even answer, huh?”

******

The list of supplies wasn’t long, but it was easy to get distracted in the island’s largest Wright shop.

“Alden, you need a grappling hook!”

“Those are neat.”

“A handheld line launcher!”

“I’m buying one as a present for myself after I make it through first quarter probably.”

“Levitating pulleys! A portable autoloom! Self-knotting rope!”

“All exciting things,” Alden agreed, examining the spools of cordage in front of him.

“Whyyyy are you not buying the exciting things, then?” Lute had the loom in his arms.

“Because gym time is training time. And during training time, I operate under the assumption that when shit goes really wrong I’m not going to have access to ginormous hardware stores full of magical doodads. What’s more likely—me getting stranded on another planet and finding the perfect Wrightmade tool? Or me getting stranded on another planet and finding some kind of rope?”

You couldn’t rely on a mad scientist’s fully stocked laboratory being within running distance all the time.

Lute didn’t answer. The silence was conspicuous considering how much talking he’d been doing since they arrived.

“What?” Alden asked, looking around at him.

“Nothing!” Lute hastily put the loom back on the shelf.

“You don’t have to pretend it’s reasonable. I know it isn’t.” Alden went back to studying the cord. “Even if I do end up in a crisis, the chances of that crisis involving me being stuck on a planet without a System and nothing but one companion and a rope we wove out of natural fibers are astronomical.”

“Hey, a man needs to be prepared for all eventualities,” Lute said lightly. “Sometimes Systems break. Sometimes drone propellers destroy eyeballs.…are you planning to learn to make ropes out of natural fibers, too?”

“Celena North needs wilderness survival classes. The fact that we don’t have them is criminal. But I’m joking about learning rope making. Mostly. And I came here to buy something like this.”

He reached for a spool of paracord in a painful shade of fluorescent yellow. “I’m not completely into making gym harder for myself. Especially not with the team aspect this time. This is an ultra strong survival cord—about as fancy as something this simple gets. And I’ll be carrying a ton of it.”

There was no rule about how much rope Alden could bring to class.

The outer sheath of this particular paracord was fire resistant, the inner strands provided him with some interesting opportunities, and it was strong enough that Lucille could haul every member of the team up the wall with it at once if for some reason that became a good idea.

“Now we need temper spheres even though they’re probably not going to be useful at all, a bottle of that powder Everly has to have to cast her ice trap, and beef jerky.”

“They’re not going to have that.”

“I know.”

******

I can’t believe they had eight different kinds of beef jerky.

As he headed through the locker room, Alden tossed a shopping bag toward Jeffy, temporarily distracting the Aqua Brute from whatever he’d been telling Reinhard.

“So many flavors!”

His delighted tone was a contrast to the conversation going on nearby. The boys on Søren’s team looked like they were discussing something serious.

“Is Søren doing all right?” Alden asked.

The Light Shaper had been a lot more rational by the time Alden had left the healing hospital last night. Rational enough that when he’d phoned his mother to tell her where he was and what had happened, he’d managed to make it sound like he’d used emergency teleportation the second the fire started instead of arguing with everyone about whether or not he could hide his injuries from the faculty.

“They’ve been growing him new skin for the past few hours,” said Febri. “He feels fine, and he’ll be back at school first thing next week. But he’s upset they told him no gym until Wednesday.”

<<Did the instructors talk to you?>> Ignacio asked. He was searching through a heavy bag that Alden knew from previous glimpses contained an alarming number of blades. According to Reinhard, Ignacio bought bulk lots of old knives off auction websites and used a spell to sharpen each one before he added it to his collection.

“You mean about what happened?” Alden shrugged. “I got a check-in call from…somebody. And Instructor Marion pulled me aside before Engaging with the Unexpected to see if I needed anything. Other than that, not really.”

The check-in had come from the trauma specialist he’d been assigned when he’d first arrived on the island. He was still having regularly scheduled video calls with her. It wasn’t required, but it was so strongly recommended by everyone—security people at the TC, the public health and safety office, intake counselors—that going along was better for now. And she was really good about not insisting on details he couldn’t or didn’t want to share.

He thought it was overkill that the school had called her for this, though, even if she was listed as one of his medical providers. He hadn’t gotten so stressed out that he took a risk with his powers.

Ignacio was opening his mouth to say something else when Max walked in.

Winston, who was replacing the white laces on his shoes with red ones, burst out, “There you are! Where have you been, you jerk? We’ve been sending you messages all day telling you our plans for the runs!”

“The plans that involve you all demanding I drop zones exactly where you want, when you want?” Max tossed his backpack onto a bench and yanked his shirt off over his head. “It’s such a deeply considered stratagem, and my role is so terribly complicated. However will I prepare myself to assist you if I don’t answer your messages?”

Everyone was suddenly very busy changing their clothes. Alden scooted toward the nearest shower to get busy with it himself.

“It’s not our fault you couldn’t keep up last time,” Winston said as Alden latched the door behind himself. “Marsha says you shouldn’t be such a dick about running out of casts. High-ranks always carry low-ranks in this kind of competition anyway. If you just cast what we tell you to, you can sit around, and one of us will get you to the finish line.”

Alden grimaced.

Max raised his voice. “I promise to cast exactly what you all tell me to. I won’t offer a single word of advice to the team. Vandy can try to hold you all together while Marsha chases down worthy opponents and the rest of you pose for the camera. I will say not a word. So let it be known.”

They’re getting along even worse than I expected. Alden was awfully relieved he hadn’t been assigned to that team.

Oddly, Mehdi wasn’t commenting on the spat. He’d been quiet ever since their team’s double loss, and Haoyu had called him “sulky” when they were discussing him as a possible target for Reinhard.

I know they say highly competitive environments help Avowed make faster progress. But we’ve only had one day of team competition, and someone’s already caught on fire.

Alden couldn’t imagine that smaller scale duels would lead to less hard feelings.

The third years must have gone through this together, and they seem sane. At least the B’s do. The second years are abnormal, but Rahul says they’re a special case.

Alden would most likely be in class with these same people next quarter and the one after. At some point it was common for high achievers to end up with higher level gym groups and low achievers to repeat a course. But until then, he was rooting for his class to be very normal. Bland. The vanilla pudding of CNH classes.

He walked out wearing his unitard a minute later to find Jeffy trying to soothe Max with a strip of beef jerky.

“It’s pepper flavored,” he said, waving it under Max’s nose.

“I don’t want it.”

“How do you know if you don’t bite it?”

“Jeffy, let’s go meet up with our group. They’re already waiting in the gym. Anyway, Max might be saving room for the dinner tonight. There’s going to be pork so many ways. Haoyu can tell you all about it. He’s memorized the menu.”

******

Their group would be facing Team Febri/Shrike for the first run. As they walked out to the track, the sky was overcast, and the wind was blowing so hard there was grit flying through the air.

Maricel and Lucille led the way, hauling bags of clayey soil with them. Njeri and Everly were right behind them, discussing their roles quietly so that the other team couldn’t hear. Reinhard was giving Lexi unsolicited tips about who to attack with Writher if the archer wasn’t available and the need was urgent. And Haoyu and Alden were bringing up the rear with Jeffy and Astrid.

The other half of the class would be watching from the bleachers while Principal Saleh, Instructor Klein, and Instructor Marion took turns highlighting team tactics and breaking down the ways individual students had chosen to use their powers. Alden was looking forward to having his turn in the audience even as he dreaded having his decision-making critiqued.

As his shoes hit the pavement, he checked himself over for the third time since setting foot outside.

Yep. All still here.

Two thousand feet of paracord sounded like a ton, but it was a very portable amount. Alden had it wrapped around him in two cross-body loops to make an X over his chest, and he was wearing a pouch full of his temper spheres. He would be allowed to carry a small knife or scissors to cut the cord if he wanted, but he did not want.

Having unnecessary sharp objects on your person versus the team with the S-rank Knife Meister was a bad idea. Instead, he’d precut the cord into long sections that were tied together with loose knots. That way he could dole out lengths of it to teammates or sacrifice pieces without wasting much time.

“We should think of this rematch as an opportunity,” said Reinhard as they took their place at the starting line on the track. “The day before yesterday is history.”

“Literally!” Astrid said.

“It’s literally history. So let’s make new history together…” He trailed off then looked around at them all uncertainly. “I’ve never done a pep talk before? But I thought I should do one as co-captain.”

Several people had wanted to try their hand at leading the team. Rather than having a big argument about it, they’d decided to have four captains. Two per run. The captaincy wasn’t about directing overall strategy or approaches to obstacles, since that was already agreed on. What they needed was someone who could keep track of the state of the game and rearrange team members to make sure their plans stayed viable after attacks from the other team had injured or killed people.

Reinhard and Njeri were in charge of this run.

Haoyu and Astrid were in charge of the next.

Alden had been a little surprised that Astrid wanted to try giving orders, but she seemed worried that she couldn’t contribute enough in other ways.

Njeri suddenly cleared her throat and put her hands on her hips. “All right, Avowed!” she bellowed.

Their whole team took a step back from her in surprise. Olive—the Adjuster on Team Febri/Shrike—yelped and whirled around to stare at her. Instructor Ivanova, standing by the track doing final hurdle checks on her tablet, looked startled too.

“Today I want you to think about one thing and one thing only—do you know what that is?” Njeri demanded

“Better teamwork,” Haoyu said.

“Aiming well?” suggested Reinhard.

“Sportsmanship?” Astrid asked.

“Impressing the principal!” Jeffy exclaimed.

“None of that!” shouted Njeri. “Victory dines at the tables of those who have prepared the greatest feasts. She can only grow fat on our preparation, our love for the game, and the flesh of our enemies.”

Alden exchanged a look with Haoyu. On the other side of him, Everly was nodding along with the speech.

“I won’t lie to you,” said Njeri, shaking her head. “We are not truly prepared. We have not sweated enough yet to fill Victory’s cup. And our love for this game is just beginning to blossom.”

“Wow,” Jeffy said in an awestruck voice.

“So what do we have left to offer Victory to tempt her toward our table?”

“Not sportsmanship?” Astrid whispered.

There was an extended pause. Then, Reinhard looked over at the other team.

“That’s right! Look at your enemy. They are our offerings to Victory. When they pass you by on the course, when they come at you with their weapons, when you feel the stirrings of intimidation, remember—they are Victory’s sustenance. And we are her hunters. We will not let her starve!”

Njeri took a deep breath, then smiled. “I’ve always wanted to give a pep talk! I thought you guys might need some extra vigor, since Febri/Shrike has beaten us before. I modeled it after a speech my hockey coach gave! How was it?”

“Energetic.”

“Motivational in a slightly threatening way.”

“Is the hockey team all right?”

“Victory!”

“But didn’t we agree that victory wasn’t our only goal?”

“A speech about maybe being okay with losing doesn’t sound as good!” Njeri protested. “How am I supposed to inspire you all with that?”

“I totally loved it!” Heloísa shouted.

“Thank you!” Njeri shouted back. “But you’re on the wrong team!”

I don’t know if it made me feel inspired, thought Alden. But I definitely feel more awake now.

Beside him, Maricel was looking guiltily at the pile of dirt bags.

“It’s fine,” said Alden. “We all decided on it.”

“But I could just pour out the sand from the bags in the gym. Or forget practicing and focus on vict—”

“You did that last time.” Lexi was staring at the track ahead of them. “If you want specific dirt, we’ll carry specific dirt.”

“It might not even slow us down,” Haoyu added. “Having it might make things run more smoothly later. We just won’t know until we try it.”

Alden thought obstacle course rules for Shapers were arbitrary to begin with. Jupiter wanted fresh-cut wood. Maricel wanted soil. There were a set number of life matter bags and sand bags on the course for them to use instead. Njeri could draw from the water obstacle if they were close enough to it or she could carry water if she wanted it earlier in the course…which they were doing this time. The water jugs were heavy.

But if this were some kind of real-world scenario, Maricel could dig up the earth right outside the building and carry it into the gym with her. Or Jupiter could knock down one of the bottlebrush-shaped trees out front and do the same. Making their teams haul their special requests around seemed a little harsh.

In the uni team competitions Alden had viewed over the past couple of days, Shapers usually had designated offside areas and weight allowances for their materials; but they were allowed to put anything in there they wanted.

I guess this is still class and the idea is limitations. Vandy’s always going to have air around for Sky Shaping. Maricel and Jupiter will usually have something available but not necessarily the type of thing they prefer.

The countdown for the race appeared, and they all took their positions.

Just follow the plan, Alden told himself. See how it goes.

******

The race began, and with it, the team’s first major strategy shift.

“Slowpokes first!” Reinhard shouted.

Not how Alden would’ve put it…but yes. Everly, with her Glaze Object spell, was the best answer for the fire box. Three casts of it would coat the box in solid ice for several minutes, allowing the rest of the team to break through with zero movement impairment.

That should more than make up for them all getting a slower start.

Everly, Njeri, Maricel, and Astrid took off. Jeffy was running with them a second later, carrying a large water jug in each hand.

Lucille bent over and allowed Lexi and Haoyu to strap bags of dirt to her back with one of Alden’s lengths of cord.

“Is that really uncomfortable?” Alden asked, prepping his own dirt for transport with Reinhard’s help. “I can take more.”

Lucille shook her head.

He was glad she had it under control. Alden would be carrying four bags himself, wrapped in paracord. They wouldn’t weigh much thanks to his authority bearing the load, but at a certain point the size became awkward for clearing the hurdles. As it was, if he screwed up he was going to have three hundred pounds of dirt instantly smashing him forward into the ground or pulling him backwards off his feet depending on his luck.

Honestly, I’m just grateful none of the faculty are saying it’s too dangerous for us to run with this much outside of the gym.

Lucille bounded off right as the slowpokes were finishing their first lap.

“I hope I tied the knots right,” Haoyu said, watching Lucille spring over a hurdle. “I feel like this is asking a lot of them.”

“It’s fine. Let’s go,” said Lexi, taking off.

The frontrunners of the other team were finished with their second lap. It was enough to send a jolt of anxiety through anyone after last class.

The first team with a person over the finish line got to take the first shot.

We’ll catch up indoors, Alden reminded himself. This is the plan.

He set off and let himself enjoy the surefootedness his new wordchain provided. It was the same as the first time Lute had given it to him; his body was always moving exactly how he told it to move.

It was, he thought, a little like running in a dream. In real life, you often pictured yourself leaping a certain way and landing a certain way only to have to adjust your expectations or recover from an imbalance. With the wordchain in effect, the leaps and the landings became an almost eerie match for Alden’s mental vision of them. The first few hurdles made him feel like he was on a roll; with the next dozen, he started to have a sense of surreality.

He came to the end of his first lap as Febri was finishing his final one, and he had a view of the Agility Brute clearing the largest hurdle with movements so fluid they would’ve put a cat to shame.

I wonder if he feels like this all the time.

Febri had launched himself far enough to land on the other side of the safety mat. No need for cushioning, not a wasted step as he sprinted for the gym.

First the track, thought Alden. Then the tube. Then the fire.

“It’s all going according to plan, everyone!” Njeri said. The bellow that Alden had decided must be her coaching voice came through on the team call and echoed toward him from the other side of the windy track at the same time. “Let’s put this boring running behind us, and go play with the fun stuff!”

A breathless cheer went up from Everly, and something like a yodel came from Astrid. Haoyu shouted an enthusiastic “Yep!” as he vaulted over a hurdle.

Alden had been pacing himself deliberately so that he’d arrive at the gym behind the obstacle freezing group as planned, but it was hard not to run a little faster with everyone yelling encouragements in each other’s ears.

******

******

“Let’s try to determine what the teams’ strategies are based on what we’ve seen at this early stage,” Instructor Marion said to the half of the class that was on the bleachers waiting their turn to run the course. “Talk with your groups. I’ll come by to hear your ideas.”

“Obviously dirt is involved for my brother’s team,” Kon said to his teammates, staring at the live progress of the race through his interface. “Lots and lots of dirt.”

“Maricel went to buy all of it in the middle of the night,” said Tuyet. “She said she couldn’t sleep.”

“Lexi’s flinging that one bag around like it insulted his mum,” Finlay observed. “It’s going to burst.”

“Look at how much weight they’re carrying for her. Dirt’s heavy. I don’t see any complaining on Maricel’s team.”

They all turned to Jupiter.

“The holly hedge you brought isn’t happening,” said Kon. “It’s massive and pointy. You’ve got scratches all over you, and it’s obviously stolen. It’s still got roots on it.”

“The fact that is has roots on it makes it borrowed!” said Jupiter. “I can put it back after class.”

They turned away.

“You guys! I promise I can put it back! I already bought it special fertilizer!”

******

“Maricel’s team has decided to arrange themselves so that the slower members are at the front of the group,” Vandy said, folding her hands in her lap and staring avidly at the drone footage. “On Wednesday, they were letting the people who could race ahead do it. Today, they’ve obviously prioritized Everly’s abilities for the first indoor obstacles, and possibly they’re thinking of her synergy with Njeri. It’s likely those two will stick together for the entire course. We’ll need to watch what they do and decide if we might want to target one of them and separate them.

“Maricel may or may not have a specific plan for the clay soil they’re carrying. She was disappointed on Wednesday that she was only able to use her simpler shaping abilities. She greatly admires Instructor Fragment because of their similar backgrounds and wants to impress her. The compression point skill she’s been practicing allows her to draw ground together and pack it very tightly but the shapes of her compression points are limited. She uses her left hand for the gestures usually and assigns her right to moving her creations through the air. She’s planning to incorporate breath gestures one day. Her range of control is impressive for a new Ground Shaper already, and—”

“Alden’s running faster,” Winston said suddenly. “Maybe he took something.”

Vandy blinked at the interruption. “What do you mean?”

“I mean like drugs.”

“Why would he need to take drugs to run at the back of their group?” Mehdi said in annoyance. “He was the third fastest last time. Weren’t you paying attention?”

“He’s running different now!” Winston insisted. “Look at him. He’s running like…more like you!”

“Excuse me, but I don’t clear hurdles like a Rabbit.”

Marsha rolled her eyes and spoke to Vandy. “Why are those two so obsessed with the B-rank?”

“Alden’s a diligent person,” Vandy said. “He also has experience in a high stress environment, so in some ways he’s the most proven member of our class. For example, during Søren’s accident last night, I’ve heard he used his powers very calm—”

“Power,” Winston interrupted. “Singular. Alden has one useful skill. Not multiple. And he’s really arrogant. He was talking like he was definitely going to get into the program before the bus even made it here. And you know…they don’t accept a lot of people like him.”

He glanced over at Max, who hadn’t spoken yet, and the rest of the team followed his gaze.

“Confidence isn’t a flaw as long as it’s earned,” Vandy said seriously. “And Max is also a very diligent student.”

Max took a sip from his water bottle and said nothing.

“Well…” Vandy hesitated. “Maybe you would all like to talk about Shrike’s team strategy instead? We could learn something from them.”

“They’ve trimmed everything holding them back,” said Marsha. “Our class has too many System experiments and wishful thinkers. It’s irritating that we won’t get another fight with their team. They’re going to be up against Tuyet’s group next. If I had one more chance at Febri…him dodging last time was a fluke. I can hit someone with the Instant Corners skill. I just need to get the angle of my strike—”

“I really think our team should’ve attacked them when they were on the bars last time,” Vandy said. “Focusing on Febri was—”

“I could’ve handled Shrike on my own, too,” said Marsha.

She looked over at Max. “Don’t save any zones for my assaults today. I want to do them on my own. I don’t need you trying to help again. I don’t need an underling.”

Max took another swig from his bottle. He spoke for the first time since leaving the locker room. “You can all have exactly what you want. No more complaints from me.”

******

******

Alden reached the gym just ahead of Haoyu, moving at a pace that felt too leisurely even if it was all going according to plan so far. Haoyu helped him free himself from his bags of dirt, and almost as soon as the bags hit the floor they lifted up into the air and headed for their master. Now that the dirt was in the gym, any re-runs of the track would be unencumbered.

“You first,” Alden said, gesturing at the entrance to the pipe.

Haoyu grinned at him. “Are you afraid of the tube?”

“You would be too if you were me!”

Haoyu hit his knees and started to crawl, and Alden followed.

“Welcome to The Workshop!” Njeri shouted as they emerged. She was forming a water ball about the size of a grapefruit and holding it out toward Everly. “Go through. Go through.”

Alden almost wanted to linger and examine The Workshop, but he couldn’t afford to. I know what’s going on anyway, he consoled himself as he and Haoyu hurried through the frozen fire obstacle.

During the first several minutes of the race, Everly, Njeri, and Maricel would be making things instead of running the course with the rest of them. It had sounded like an odd idea when Everly had presented it. But she wanted to use her spells a lot more, and Njeri felt like her Water Shaping had gone underutilized as well. So they’d come up with this.

If it went like they hoped it would, then they were establishing a secure area in front of the pipe and making resources that would be useful when combat started.

“Olive’s in the gym!” said Reinhard. “Eyes on Olive! She just went in the pipe. Lexi—”

“I’m heading toward the gym now. She’s not out here,” Lexi said.

“Confirmed. Olive’s really in the pipe! I’ll watch for her until you guys reach the top of the rope climb, then Haoyu and I will swap.”

Alden and Haoyu ran past the weight obstacle—already conveniently moved by Lucille and the others and not yet reset.

Our timing’s just right. Now where is everyone?

Alden scanned the parts of the gym he could see from here. Lucille was standing at the bottom of the climbing rope up ahead; that would be her position for a little while. Jeffy had crossed the high bar swings up near the ceiling. Astrid was right behind him. Reinhard was standing on the first bar, staring down at the other team’s pipe with a focused expression.

On the other side of the course, Ignacio was rapidly carving handholds into the fifteen-meter wall for his teammates to climb, and Sanjay was climbing them in his wake. Rebecca wasn’t visible, but if they were doing it like last time, she was probably already over and in the water. The Brute was very boingy when she used her spell impression and her full jumping power.

So boingy she sometimes overshot her target or landed wrong.

“Looks like they’re putting Sanjay over the line first,” Alden predicted as he pulled himself hand over hand up the rope. “It could be Rebecca, but I bet they let her stay in play.”

This wordchain is amazing, he thought again as he reached the top and stretched out to grab the bars.

When he’d gotten up the rope for the first time on Wednesday, his arms had already been burning a little. Now they weren’t. Does having less wasted motion make that much of a difference?

He swung past Reinhard, who was still watching the other team’s pipe like a hawk. Olive wasn’t coming out. She was definitely waiting for the moment when her using her spells would create as much confusion as possible.

“We’re still putting Astrid over the line first, Alden,” Reinhard said.

Not a necessary reminder, but it was fine. “Got it.”

Astrid was the obvious choice. She contributed to the team, but in terms of her magic and skillset she didn’t contribute anything irreplaceable to the team. So sending her over the finish line and taking her out of play was the option that would cost them the least.

I hope she doesn’t feel too bad about it. She’s always so upbeat, but still…

The bar swings were easy enough, like monkey bars if the playground wanted the monkeys to fall to their deaths. The psychological impact of the height was actually worse than the physical effort required.

Alden swung his body and flew a short distance. Thanks to the wordchain, he was abnormally aware of the flow of air across his skin even as his hands wrapped around the final bar.

Lute had told him it was a chain that you learned to use better with practice, and he could see that it was true. There was a mental shift he would need to get used to. His body on the wordchain moved differently, so he’d have to learn to make decisions that utilized it appropriately.

And then know how to switch expectations for myself when I’m not using it.

He pulled himself up onto the narrow metal perch at the end of the bars, then looked down. A semi-opaque barrier separated this obstacle from the next at ground level, and the only way you were allowed to move through it according to the rules was to enter through a specific gap in the barrier you accessed by traveling down a narrow metal beam. It stabbed toward the floor at a steep angle, so walking down it wasn’t an option unless you had a good spell for it. Sliding wouldn’t kill you if you could manage it without falling, but they’d gotten some sprains and a broken tailbone experimenting with it on their previous runs, which slowed them down.

Alden dropped a length of cord on the perch for whoever might need it then lowered himself carefully onto the beam, stomach pressed to the metal and butt pointed toward the floor like a sane person. Not like Jeffy, who refused to be persuaded that rocketing groundward headfirst was harder even if you could see where you were going.

“Slide, stop, slide, stop!” Reinhard called, passing his pipe-watching task off to Haoyu and swinging across the bars toward Alden.

Again. Unnecessary. But I guess it’s kind of nice to have the call-outs to remind everyone what’s going on.

Alden relaxed his arms and legs to loosen his grip on the beam, slid rapidly downward, re-gripped before he could pick up too much momentum, and repeated the process all the way through the gap in the barrier and to the floor.

He rolled backward and sprang to his feet, untying the next section of cord as he ran to join Astrid and Jeffy at the base of the white, fifteen-meter wall. The gym-created obstacle was smooth as glass, and to Alden it felt hard as a rock, though the Meisters could pierce it, and Lucille could gouge chunks out of it barehanded if she didn’t care about the damage she’d take in the process.

“Alden! I’m ready!” Jeffy waved at him.

“Boost us up! This man’s ready to swim!” Astrid was still trying to highlight the joys of aquatic work at every opportunity.

“You remember how we do this?” Alden asked, hanging on to one end of the cord as he dropped the rest of the coil onto the floor. This length was still entrusted to him, and it would stay that way as long as he didn’t take his hands off the end of it. He hurried backwards, grateful that the wall had a run-up zone in front of it that he could use this way.

“I hold onto Astrid, not the magic rope!” Jeffy announced.

“Right!” Alden stopped backing away when there were five coils of cord left in the pile beside Jeffy. This piece had been pre-measured for the task, so it should be long enough.

He bent, preserved, and lifted. The cord stiffened, and the coiled end rose from the floor fifty feet away. As usual, the strain on his authority was surprisingly high when he was preserving at a distance. There was now a hoop of coiled cord on the end of a straight length.

“Reinhard, should we wait on you?” he asked.

“Don’t!” the archer said over coms. “I’ll go up separately. Everyone, check in!”

“Workshop is good!” Njeri called. “Maricel has a really great idea. For second attack if we time it right.”

“Olive’s still in the pipe!” Haoyu announced.

“The weights have reset,” Lucille said.

“Remember we’re moving those again as soon as Sanjay hits the final obstacle!” Njeri called. “Lexi, you’re up on bars with a view of everything. What’s the state of the rest of their team?”

“Shrike’s on the wall monitoring our progress. Febri, Sanjay, and Rebecca are finishing up the water obstacle. Heloísa’s started shifting their weights again, and they’ve got a couple of people climbing the wall.”

“Okay, let’s move, everybody! We’ll catch up to them in the water.”

“Thanks to Jeffy!” shouted Astrid.

“Thanks to Jeffy,” Alden agreed. “Ready to lift.”

He felt a jolt of excitement and nerves. The obstacle course itself was easily doable as a team. When the attacks started…that was when things got a lot more complicated.

“Tell me if you start to have some kind of a problem on the way up,” Alden ordered as he lowered his hoop over Jeffy’s head.

The Aqua Brute stuck out his arms toward Astrid, and as Alden lifted, the paracord caught Jeffy under the armpits and picked his feet up off the ground. Astrid hopped up and grabbed him in a full body bearhug, her arms going over the cord and around his back, her legs wrapping around his waist. The paracord was stuck between them now.

That’s actually more thorough than what we discussed, Alden thought, lifting them slowly higher and watching them closely to make sure they weren’t about to change positions and slip. As long as Astrid didn’t lose her grip, there should be no way for them to fall. He approved. Jeffy seemed alarmed, but not in a bad way. His feet kicked wildly and his eyes were wide, but he wrapped his arms around Astrid as they rose.

“All right!” Alden said. “Shout if you need anything.”

“Higher! Faster!” yelled Astrid. “Let’s win!”

“Yeah!!” Jeffy said.

Alden resisted the urge to oblige them. For one thing, their bodyweight was being entirely supported by a fairly narrow hoop instead of a proper harness, and even if Jeffy was a tough dude, it was probably uncomfortable. For another, speed at the end of the line wasn’t the easiest thing to judge if he rushed. As Fragment had warned Alden when he was practicing rescues in a similar fashion, small wrist movements at his end of the preserved cord resulted in much larger swings on the far end.

Catapulting them across the gym wouldn’t be very friendly of me.

“That looks just as neat as the first time I saw it,” Everly said from her spot at The Workshop as Astrid and Jeffy reached the top of their arc. “Like he’s got a strange balloon.”

“I am the strange balloon!” Astrid crowed. “Sanjay just hit the final obstacle! Move those weights, Lucille! Wow! People are getting excited in the bleachers. I see them pointing.”

There was a noise barrier up between the runners and the audience. Alden was grateful for that. Once his excited passengers were fifty feet up in the air and more or less vertically oriented, he just walked over to the base of the wall with them.

“Jeffy, let go of her, but keep the cord under your arms! Astrid, you should be able to drop onto the top of the wall easily.” He paused, then added. “Don’t miss!”

Astrid was on her feet on top of the wall a second later, and Jeffy was right behind her. He whooped then dove off the back. A splash announced his landing in the water tank, and Astrid followed him.

“Good job!” Reinhard shouted, running up toward Alden with Lexi right behind him. “Get me up there, too, so I can get ready to snipe.”

Alden kept his cord preserved, ran back to where he’d started from last time, and dropped the hoop for Reinhard.

The archer opted to wrap his arms and legs around it and dangle upside down like a tree sloth.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” Njeri was shouting. “It’s almost time!”

“Thanks for being my bodyguard,” Alden said to Lexi while he lifted the sloth into the air, pausing briefly when it looked like Reinhard needed to adjust his position.

Lexi had his back turned to Alden, and Writher was long and at-the-ready as he watch the other team’s half of the course. “They’ve put Rebecca back on top of their wall. She’s on watch replacing Shrike. I can’t see him from here, so he’s got to be back on the floor, getting ready for attack. Febri’s heading for the ground again, too. ”

Febri/Shrike used their S-ranks for attack, though they’d let Heloísa and Rebecca have a turn last time when it became obvious that they were pulling ahead of Alden’s team.

All the other teams used their S-ranks as primary attackers. For good reason.

“I think if it’s Shrike I might be able to stop him from doing too much damage to you,” said Lexi. “If it’s Febri…”

“It’s fine. Shit happens.”

Alden forced himself not to fling Reinhard toward the ceiling faster out of nerves.

“Everly, get to freezing,” Reinhard said from overhead. “They might go for you instead of Alden. Lucille, you’re probably their third choice.”

“Olive’s in the pipe,” Haoyu said.

“If she stays in there, let me take first attack!” Maricel called.

“Jeffy’s got me through the water!” Astrid shouted. “I’m heading for the finish.”

An Aqua Brute really does make that obstacle fast.

A bell rang. The lights on the other half of the course lit up. The invisible barrier that separated the two sides gave a warning flare then dropped. The other team was now allowed to cross over for the purpose of making a single attack or messing around with one of the obstacles using either their powers or an obstacle modification tablet that lay at the entrance to each of the pipes.

Resetting the weights could screw a team over big time if their strongest members were over the finish line. Resetting the wall so that the handholds teams had created were removed was also an option.

“Worskhop is protecting the tablet and Everly!” Maricel called.

“I’m on Alden,” Lexi reported.

“I’ll go with Astrid to protect her!” Jeffy said.

“No!” Reinhard and Njeri spoke over each other.

“You’re staying in the water, remember?” Reinhard said as Alden carried him toward the wall at a fast walk.

“You stay there unless we need you to run back!” Njeri agreed.

“Oh, that’s right.” Jeffy sounded mournful.

Reinhard made it onto the top of the wall. He crouched low and used the vantage point to scan the course.

Relieved he’d gotten some critical teammates into position in time, Alden dropped preservation, and let his cord fall in a scrambled heap at his feet. Hastily toeing the mess into a slightly more cohesive shape, he picked it all up together. It made a small, handheld shield with lots of holes in it. But it only took seconds.

“What are you going to do with that?” Lexi asked without looking back over his shoulder.

“They might not send their S’s. I should be able to take a hit from the others. You never know.”

It was inconvenient to have any member of their team sent back to the track or heavily injured and movement restricted. But some of them were particularly juicy targets.

Incapacitating Maricel, Lucille, or Jeffy would be a real triumph for their enemies; but Febri/Shrike probably wouldn’t try it. Maricel was over by the pipe and the frozen box, which would provide her with a lot of shelter. The giant sandbags she had on hand also served her as both weapons and shields.

Jeffy was, hopefully, underwater. Getting into the tank and successfully attacking him there would be nearly impossible for anyone on the Febri/Shrike team. Lucille was more vulnerable, but she didn’t come across that way while she was trotting back and forth with metric ton weights.

We’re lucky they don’t know she doesn’t want to lethally hit people. It really limits her options for responding.

The other teams didn’t seem to realize it yet anyway. For now, the risk of not taking Lucille down in a single hit and getting backhanded to the moon by a retaliatory strike was probably going to keep attackers from getting within an easy arm’s reach of her.

If enemies didn’t go for the S’s, Alden and Everly were the next most appealing victims. Everly was protected by Maricel. So the most likely place for them to attack was here.

Here I am, both breakable and useful to the team.

And Alden’s body wasn’t the only thing that was breakable. The way his skill worked gave him an additional exploitable weakness for this kind of game.

“Don’t shield against a hit if you’re not sure how strong it is,” Lexi said, keeping himself between Alden and any possible incoming threats.

“I know.”

“The next run—”

“I know. I’m the one who pointed out that my own death would technically be more helpful than me trying to protect myself sometimes.”

Alden’s skill was stronger than anyone here knew, and if he was right with his theorizing, it was more versatile and potent than it might have been in a normal B-rank Rabbit’s hands. But some of his classmates could still magically overwhelm him in one strike and put him out of commission for the rest of class.

It just depended on which classmates they were and what the strike was.

And beyond that, there was compounding fatigue to consider.

Their current strategy called for Alden doing as many of these high lifts as were necessary to get people over the wall. Depending on how many deaths and re-runs they suffered, it could be quite a few. If he fatigued his skill, Maricel would take over or they’d start climbing the much more tiring and slow way; but it was best if Alden stayed available for the length of this run and the next.

Which meant he should only use his messy little shield here to soak attacks if doing so wouldn’t be too costly or render him useless later.

If it’s Febri, should I try? He could, like, blink at just the wrong moment and a miracle could happen. But how hard does he hit compared to someone like Heloísa. If it’s—

“Febri’s over the line! Febri’s over the line! Heading for The Workshop!” Reinhard’s call was excited. “Lucille, stop—!”

“Olive’s out of the pipe!” Haoyu announced at the same time. “And another Olive’s out of the pipe! And a third!”

“I’m almost to the finish line!” Astrid said. “Hang in there!”

“Haoyu, Reinhard, try to determine which one is the real Olive. Lucille, run toward Febri. Grab him! Maricel, guard.” Njeri’s instructions were delivered so rapidly that it would have been hard to interpret them if it wasn’t fairly well planned in advance.

Alden and Lexi both ran over to an opening in the wall—about two-bodies wide—that connected this part of their team’s course to the previous one so that people who’d completed the bars and gone down the beam could run back to the old obstacles to help teammates with them. It was a one-way situation. You could use this shortcut to rapidly backtrack, but once you’d backtracked, you were required to return the hard way.

This was also a spot where people waiting to go up the wall could see what was happening, and where attackers—who didn’t have to obey obstacle order rules on the enemy course—could come through.

Now that they knew Febri was the attacker and he was going in the other direction, it was safe to take a peek.

Lucille and Febri were facing off in front of the final, cube-shaped weight.

She crouched. Her arms were wide, and she was poised to spring and grab Febri. But the Agility Brute bounced once on the balls of his feet, feinted down and to the right, then leaped up and to the left so fast that by the time Lucille had started to move to intercept him in the fakeout direction, he was already airborne, turning an unnecessary but very cool-looking flip as he sailed toward the frozen Workshop area.

Lexi was standing at the edge of the line they weren’t allowed to cross without it being deemed an official backtrack, but Writher was stretching out over it toward Febri, twitching angrily.

Alden chose not to comment on that. They were way too far away for Lexi to reach the S-rank with the whip.

“I bet he’s smiling,” Lexi hissed. “You can tell by how he bounces around that he’s smiling.”

“Not for long,” Maricel said quietly over coms.

It was really nice of them to go for Everly first, thought Alden. Kind of impractical considering she had two companions to Alden’s one. I guess they thought they could get away with taking a closer look at what we were doing over there.

He felt a little smug about what was going to happen, and then two bells rang and both sides of the course flashed again.

“I’m over the finish line!” Astrid shouted. “And another one of theirs is, too.”

Lexi and Alden stared at each other.

“Shrike,” they both said.

A moment later, they spotted him. Ignacio was running toward them fast, shouting instructions to his own teammates in Spanish, and wearing a chef’s knife roll bag on each shoulder in addition to his System-gifted Meister daggers—one in each hand, pointed straight ahead of him.

A pair of arrows zinged through the air one after the other. Reinhard was allowed to shoot as much as he wanted at interlopers on their half of the course. But judging by the swearing, he’d missed Febri.

He wouldn’t be aiming for Shrike. The S-rank had taken an unusual skill, and in addition to its offensive uses, it neatly countered Reinhard’s arrows.

It was up to Lexi to deal with him.

“Haoyu,” said Reinhard, keeping his voice low. “Which Olive is real?”

“Don’t know yet. Sorry. She’s improved her realism now that she knows what the course is like. Best guess is the middle one.”

A lot of things happened all at once. It was a familiar chaos after Wednesday’s runs, but Alden still couldn’t quite believe how fast it all moved when the attacks started.

He let the mini shield, too small to be useful versus Ignacio’s favorite attack, unravel. He started re-coiling the end of it to make his teammate-lifting shape as he got out of the Knife Meister’s sight and pressed himself to the barrier. Lexi was standing boldly in the opening, ready to intercept, Writher curling through the air in front of him threateningly.

“Taking our attack shot,” Reinhard was saying. “Aiming for one of their wall climbers since we don’t know where Olive is.”

Alden listened.

Running footsteps paused as Ignacio considered his options.

<<Lexi wants me to attack him instead of Alden!>> he shouted to his teammates.

An arrow flew toward its target.

“Got the climber!” Reinhard sounded gleeful.

A shattering, popping noise came from the workshop. Followed by a yelp.

<<Febri?!>>

Writher lashed out. There was swearing in Spanish.

Alden poked his head out from behind the wall for just long enough to see that the whip had grabbed Ignacio by the leg and yanked him off balance. His knife rolls were open on the floor beside him. He was struggling against the whip for now, but if he just stopped and turned around…

Alden dropped the coil of paracord he’d just made behind Lexi and ran backwards, putting the partition between him and Shrike again and unspooling his rope just like he had to put Jeffy up the wall.

“Shrike tried to turn toward The Workshop!” Lexi was calling for the team’s benefit. “Writher’s got him, but he hasn’t attacked, and he still has his arms free to—”

“Step backward, Lexi!” Alden shouted, sending a mental text to enforce the message simultaneously. “One step backward!” [Step backward!]

It was just a crazy, last second scheme. Something he attempted because the idea popped into his head, and in the haze of the fight he couldn’t see any immediate drawbacks.

Getting the timing right was at least ninety percent luck. Lexi taking a step backward was probably more a response to what was happening with the enemy in front of him than to Alden’s command.

But he did step backward. Right into the center of the prepared loop behind him.

“GRAB THE ROPE!” Alden yelled, preserving and pushing the cord straight up over his head. It caught Lexi under his extended arm, and an instant after his feet had left the ground, his other was hooked over it.

Alden lifted his roommate much too fast for safety and just fast enough that the bulk of Ignacio’s attack missed him.

One of the Knife Meister’s blades, glowing a dark, burning orange, shot below Lexi’s feet and every sharp object in Shrike’s vicinity followed it.

The Leading Knife skill.

Alden hadn’t been familiar with it until he’d seen his classmate use it. Most knife-throwing Avowed seemed to pride themselves on pinpoint accuracy, power, and weapon spell effects more similar to Tuyet’s darts. But The Leading Knife made any sufficiently knifelike object within the user’s range orient to point in the same direction as Shrike’s lead blade. Reinhard was particularly miffed about the existence of a skill that made even his strongest arrows rotate in the wrong direction as they approached their target.

And once the lead blade left Shrike’s hand, all of those servant blades chased it like a flock of birds.

The mundane blades were confined to quite a large spherical area behind the thrown Meister weapon, though it was hard to make out the shape unless there were a lot of weapons in the air at once. It was a great skill for turning a person or whole groups of people into pincushions.

A large knife at the top of the flock smashed into Lexi’s shins before Alden had him fully out of range, then kept going. But they missed the worst of it, and Ignacio was dangling off the floor now, leg still caught by Writher. Lexi was staring down at him with dignity and focus befitting a person who wasn’t barely hanging onto his uncomfortable perch by his armpits.

“I think his leg is probably missing.” He was murmuring to himself so quietly that it only came through coms. “That’s good. A little fall now. No more attacking.”

Writher phased out and returned to its normal size. As Shrike stood up with the stiff motions of someone enduring a serious movement penalty, Lexi called, “Shrike’s seriously injured, but I don’t think he’ll die! Let’s let him go! He’ll slow them down.”

Shrike looked back over his shoulder and grimaced. Then he sighed and started hopping away from them on one foot.

“Wait! Why am I up in the air?!”

Alden stared up as Lexi expression turned shocked and he scrambled to throw a leg over the hoop to make himself more secure.

“You didn’t know?” Alden asked, baffled.

“My weapon requires concentration.”

“You did amazing, then!” Alden said. “I was going really fast and you held on great!”

“What’s wrong with my leg?!”

“You got stabbed on the way up. It shouldn’t be too bad.”

“He’s stabbed? Good!” Njeri called.

“Why is that good!?”

“Because we need someone over the line right now, and he’s close enough to make it to the finish if he’s only slightly injured! Alden, get him over the wall. Jeffy, get him through the water. Haoyu—”

“I think I know which Olive is real now. Keeping my eyes on her.”

“Thank god,” said Reinhard. “That antitargeting spell she has shouldn’t be allowed in combination with the illusions!”

“You guys!” Everly sounded excited. “Do you realize what just happened?”

There was a pause. Alden grinned.

“We injured their S-ranks! We repelled two attacks and got one of our own!The plan’s working!” Everly said.

“What happened over there?” Lexi asked.

“I’ll tell you all about it after the game,” Njeri said. “Now hurry!”

“Up you go!” Alden called, lifting his strange balloon higher into the air.




********