“Captain Dent?” he asked breathlessly. “Valera Dent? You spoke to her? Directly?”
Rei nodded. “Trust me, I was shocked enough for all three of us when it happened. She’s the one who told me to check my manifestation.” He waved his free hand, the claws flashing. “She’s also the one who told me about our parameter testing.”
“That explains where she got off to…” Viv mumbled, exchanging a look with Catcher, who finally let Rei’s arm drop. “We were wondering where she went, after the old man with glasses had you taken off the field on a gurney.”
“Careful. That old man is a lieutenant colonel.”
Viv blinked at him in surprise.
“Yeah,” Rei affirmed with a laugh. “Lieutenant Colonel Willem Mayd. The chief medical officer for the school.”
“Look at you, Mr. Popular,” Catcher chuckled, giving Rei an approving nod. “Not strange though, I suppose. You had to have surprised some of the higher-ups as much as you did the other first years.”
Rei felt some color come to his cheeks, and he had a hard time not grinning. “Recall,” he said, shifting Shido back into its bands before pressing Catcher. “I surprised the cadets?”
Viv snorted, giving him an “are you serious?” look, but Catcher appeared thrilled.
“Oh you have no idea. I mean there was obviously a lot of muttering and skepticism when you were heading down to the field, but the moment you threw that hat, man… And then the body check! A lot of people changed their tune pretty quick. And then, when you—!”
After some encouragement from Viv that they should get moving again, Rei spent the rest of the walk back to the dorms listening to Catcher give a blow-by-blow playback of his fight as seen from the stands. He suspected the boy of embellishing a lot of the details—he certainly hadn’t thought he looked remotely as badass as he was being made out to be in the retelling—but every time he would glance at Viv for confirmation she would just shrug and nod, as if to say “that’s how it went.” As it turned out, he had been laughed at and booed when he’d run away from Laurent near the end of the match, but Catcher assured him most of his harassers had shut up quick when they realized the trick he’d almost pulled off, and the rest had gone quiet after he’d been gutted by the spear only to keep punching at the C-Ranker’s shield like he still had a prayer of getting through.
Feeling pretty good about himself, Rei had then asked after the Team Battle, and this time Viv joined in the recounting with enthusiasm. She and Catcher both spilled the details they remembered of the class’ other top rankers, and told him about the fight, which had been set in the massive “Cargo Bay” field that emulated the cavernous storage bay of an intersystem transport craft. Apparently it had been a decently well-balance matchup, but the Blue Team—the other two designations having been Red and Green—eked out victory when Logan Grant had bested a Lancer named Kastro Vademe. It had been a pretty vicious fight—every other combatant already FDA—but Grant, a Mauler-Type, had ended up taking Vademe’s head off, accruing instant Fatal Damage.
“It happened so fast!” Catcher’s voice was tinged with glee as the doors to Kanes opened for them, bringing his hands around together to slash horizontally at the air. “They were going at it, and then wham. Vademe didn’t duck in time. If it had been a true call, I think we would have seen part of him go flying into the seating.”
“Good thing SCT stands for Simulated Combat Tournament for a reason,” Viv said blandly, though she couldn’t hide her own enthusiasm completely. “And keep your voice down.”
Catcher blinked, looking around, and seemed surprised to find himself in the lobby of the first year dorms, as well as the point of attention for many of the dozens of eyes lingering in the space.
Fortunately for him—and less fortunately for Rei—the interest was quick to move from Catcher when people realized who the blond boy was standing with.
Contrary to the empty quiet of the space when he and Viv first arrived at the dorm that morning, there were now maybe forty or so cadets taking up many of the seats, couches, and chairs arranged over the chamber’s crimson carpet. Even beyond them, in the open courtyard, a half-dozen people were seated along the top of the knee-high stone wall that surrounded the bent, red-orange tree at its center. While many were still in their regulars—perhaps having loosened a button or two—most had doffed their caps, or even shed their jackets, with a scattered few apparently having already taken the time to change into casuals now that they were at leisure with the end of the day’s scheduled events.
Almost exclusively, though—regardless of the state of dress—every gaze that had looked in their direction as they arrived was now trained on Rei.
Whispers started up, and soon more people were turning. From the group a few people raised friendly hands in welcome, but the larger part of the attention was subdued at best, and less than amicable at worst. Even in the few seconds he had to take it all in before Viv pushed him towards the elevators, Rei saw dozens of frowns, and even a frequent open glare. As he was rather firmly guided away from the center of the lobby—he really needed to ask what her newest Strength spec was—a few voices did rise up to shout after him, telling him they’d “enjoyed the fight” or were “impressed he held out so long.” These encouragements, unfortunately, were immediately drowned out by the buzz of intense conversation as Viv pushed him into the elevator car that had mercifully already been on the first floor, Catcher stepping in right on their heels.
Dent had a point about the attention, Rei thought with a bit of a grimace once they started rising.
Unfortunately, the unpleasantries proved themselves far from over.
Reaching the third floor in silence, the three of them didn’t comment on the mutual hurry in their step as they made for 304. Rushing inside together, Rei shut the door behind them a little too quickly, breathing a private sigh of relief.
“Well that was… interesting,” Viv said uncertainly.
“Putting it mildly.” Rei stepped between them, pulling his cap off with the intent of heading for his room before figuring out the shower in the shared bathroom he assumed was the sixth door off the common space. “Was I imagining it, or were some of them looking at me like I was fresh meat in a buffet line at—oh, sorry.”
He stopped short as he stepped into the living area, his jacket halfway undone. A dark-skinned girl with long, platinum-silver hair was seated on one of the two couches in the room, her attention fixed on the smart-glass wall, where several varied screens depicting as many different SCT fight recordings where playing all at once. He’d been afraid he’d disturbed her entertainment—Or study? he thought, noting the pad and stylus in her hands as he walked around the couches to see her face—but she hadn’t so much as glanced back at him as he came in.
“Oh! Chancery!” Catcher said with his trademark spirit, coming up behind Rei and noticing the girl for the first time. “Nice! You haven’t met Rei and Viv yet. These are our—”
“Roommates, yes.” The girl’s voice was flat, and she didn’t look away from the wall as the stylus moved steadily over the pad’s surface. “I’m capable of reading, Catchwick. And I’d prefer you addressed me by my surname, if you please.”
Raising an eyebrow, Rei looked to Catcher—who rolled his eyes—then Viv—who shrugged even as she frowned at the back of the girl who had to be Chancery Cashe.
Deciding to try and take another approach, he moved to ease himself down opposite this newest suitemate, tossing his cap on the coffee table between them before looking over the fights she was indeed very obviously studying.
“The Cutter versus… Oh! Gobta Rimuru!” It didn’t take him more than a moment to get excited. “And that’s Cameron Athens versus Lancela, isn’t it? These are all some of the best Lancers in the last twenty years!” He turned to Cashe with a grin, hoping to extend an olive branch. “Is that your Type?”
The girl did glance at him, then, but her purplish-green eyes were anything but f
riendly even in the brief moment he had her attention. She looked—there was no other description for it—like he had just forcefully shoved something rather unpleasant under her nose.
“Yes, that’s them, and yes, that is my Type. Any other questions, or can I get back to work?”
Bewildered, Rei looked around at Catcher and Viv again. The Saber threw his arms up behind Cashe as though in annoyed surrender, while Viv sported the expression of someone wondering how best to get rid of a corpse on campus.
“Cha—I mean Cashe.” Catcher corrected himself quickly when the silver-haired girl twitched irritably at the slip up. “It’s our first night here. Maybe we can hang out? Get to know each other? We’re going to be living together for the next year…”
Apparently, this was not the correct thing to say.
Rei saw Cashe’s neuro-optic flare in her eyes, and the smart-glass wall went blank, then clear, flooding the room with late-afternoon sunlight. She whirled on Catcher, glaring at him even as she tapped out of whatever notes she’d been taking on her pad.
“No, we can’t ‘hang out.’ I don’t know what you three are expecting from this Institute, but if you’re already spending time worrying about making friends more than our purpose here, then I’m pretty sure I won’t need to worry about you crowding the suite for very long. What’s more—” her strikingly-colored eyes slid to Rei’s before snapping back to Catcher, like she hadn’t meant to look in his direction “—I’ve been here less than ten hours, and have already been given reason to believe the Galens reputation won’t be worth as much as I’d hoped upon graduation. I’m clearly going to need to work twice as hard as I planned to if I want to leave this school in good standing with the front line officers, and would therefore appreciate it if you wouldn’t go out of your way to distract me.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Viv made the demand through clenched teeth, hands in fists by her sides, her obvious anger speaking to the fact that she—like Rei, and very likely Catcher—knew all too well what the girl was about.
Any possibility of the contrary was cast aside as Cashe, without so much as looking at him, pointed right at Rei’s face.
“Why is he here?” she seethed. “I heard Captain Dent—we all did—and even after that I checked his ISCM records. What’s an E-Ranker doing at the Galens Institute?”
“The same thing you are, I imagine.” Viv had unlocked her jaw, speaking a little more clearly, but the look on her face could have murdered. “Working to become the best User he can be. And if the board of admissions accepted him, then maybe you should trust that there’s a reason.”
“Ha!” Cashe scoffed, standing up prissily. She still hadn’t looked at Rei again. “I very much doubt that. More like someone’s family didn’t like the idea of their son going to some nameless military academy, or the favorite nephew of a board member somehow ended up in the ‘accepted’ pile.” At last the girl turned on him, her anger like a brewing storm in her dark face. “Some of us actually worked for our place here. Did you know that? Some of us worked very, very hard.”
“You shut the fu—!”
“Viv. Don’t.”
Rei cut across Viv’s fury sharply, holding up a hand to stop her. She whirled on him, undoubtedly ready to argue that she had every right to tongue-lash the pompous girl into a thousand flayed pieces, but came up short when she caught the look in his eyes.
Rei had gone cold inside. He had expected hesitation, expected bullying and backlash. But this… This was not something he had prepared for. It occurred to him, then, for the first time, that he bore more than the weight of his own hopes on his shoulders. He was a risk, he realized. An outlier. A recruit so far outside the norm of the Institute’s usual crop that already there were people questioning the means by which he’d gotten himself admitted to the prestigious school. He wanted to kick himself, wanted to curse his own idiocy for not realizing it.
In that moment, though, he more than anything wanted to slam his first into someone’s face.
Forcing himself to take a breath, he met Chancery Cashe’s gaze steadily. “I’m sorry we disturbed your studying,” he told her as calmly as he could. “We’ll be more considerate, next time, if you’re working.”
He got nothing but a sneer in return, and with a huff Cashe strode out from around the couches, shoved open the door to her room, and slammed it again behind her. A few seconds later the muffled sounds of the feeds she’d been watching picked up again as the girl must have brought them up on the private smart-glass of her own window.
There was the shuffling of feet, and a second later Rei felt the cushion he was seated on shift, and he knew Catcher had taken a seat next to him.
“Catcher…” he started after a moment. “Do you know what my last name typically means?”
In the corner of his eye he saw the boy nod, pulling off his cap as he did to set it beside Rei’s.
“Wasn’t gonna make any assumptions, but I will if you’re asking me that. You didn’t want to tell her?”
Rei considered, then shook his head. Across from them, Viv was taking her own seat, still vibrating with anger. “I don’t get the impression she’s had the easiest time getting here. I don’t think embarrassing her would have been a step in the right direction.”
“A step in the right direction would have been me stepping my foot right up her—gah!” Viv made a face, punching a fist into the cushion by her thigh so hard there was a distinct creak of bending metal.
Together they all froze, staring at Viv’s hand, still sunk into the couch.
Then, finally, Rei managed to laugh.
“I’m definitely going to need to get stronger. If your Strength spec gets any higher, they’re gonna have to start replacing the entire floor anytime you overhear someone giving me shit.”
Beside him, Catcher started to chuckle at that. After a few seconds more of scowling, so did Viv, retracting her fist and doing her best to smooth out the wide dimple left in the cushion.
There was the click of the suite door opening, and all of them looked around in time to see the broad form of Jack Benaly stride into the common area. The big Brawler froze when he saw them, apparently taken aback at their presence.
“Yo,” Catcher attempted a greeting, raising a hand in welcome. Viv did the same from the other couch, as did Rei, and it was on him that Benaly’s beady eyes fixed. There was a tense moment as one of the first year’s top rankers stared at Rei, a pause that extend into 3 seconds, then 5. Then, like he’d never hesitated to begin with, Benaly made a line straight for his room, and Rei’s heart sank.
Great, he thought privately. Two out of three roommates hate me before classes even—
“How did you keep going? After Laurent speared you?”
Rei started, then turned. Benaly had stopped with his palm on the handle of the door, and was looking around to face him again.
“S-sorry?” Rei stuttered, too surprised to process the question.
“After Laurent speared you through the gut,” the Brawler repeated, his voice even, but earnest. “How did you keep hitting her? I’ve been going over it nonstop in my head, and I can’t figure it out.”
“Oh,” Rei scrambled for a good answer. “Uh… She probably just missed all my vitals, right? Otherwise it would have been a pretty quick end.”
He tried at a smile, hoping Benaly would buy the lie.
He didn’t.
“It was a clean thrust,” the boy said, eyes narrowing. “Through and through, stomach to spine. Your legs even gave out—both of them—which would only happen with complete bilateral interruption of all voluntary motor control. Cord dissection. So don’t try to tell me she missed your vitals.”
The smile slipped from Rei’s lips. He hesitated a second more, trying and failing to come up with a good excuse, anything that would sound like the truth.
In the end, though, the truth was all that was left to him.
&n
bsp; “I have… I’ve got a pretty high pain tolerance,” he admitted slowly, watching Benaly carefully. “It helped me keep my head on straight. At least for a while.”
Another pause, the top ranker peering at him in the same way Valera Dent had not an hour before, like he were trying to read for the lie in his words.
And then—like the captain—Benaly seemed to choose to believe him.
“Pain tolerance,” he muttered to himself, as if taking some mental note as he turned the handle to his room and started to step inside. Before he closed the door behind himself, however, Benaly paused, glancing over his shoulder.
“Good fight, by the way.”
And then the door shut with a click, and Rei was left to stare in disbelief after the boy with Catcher and Viv doing the same right alongside him.
CHAPTER 16
“We are not machines. We are not machinations of war. There is too often a misconception within the broader society of mankind that Users are little more than tools to be selected and wielded as needed. I add my voice to this idea of public tournaments and demonstration not for the entertainment value and potential revenue many of my colleagues have cited, but rather because it is an opportunity for us to press upon the populace the fact that—though we may be military men and women—we are yet men and women.”
- Major General Daniel Weber
Central Command, Earth
Committee for Simulated Combat Establishment
6th meeting, c. 2275
“Aria, you’re the first cadet in nearly a decade to start your years at Galens as a C-Ranked User. You’re the first in two to already have an Ability. And you’re the first since before I was born to enter the term with both.” Rama Guest shook his head at his niece from behind his wide, lacquered desk, clearly not comprehending. “So—with all of that in mind—why are you choosing to spend your time asking me about an E-Ranked outlier we admitted on a whim?”
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