For the usual 2 hours-plus the four of them sparred, Rei taking on Aria for most of the time, Viv against Catcher. They swapped up on occasion for a change of pace, but on the whole kept to their routines, stopping only to give each other feedback or inquire from someone about a particular problem their respective Type might cause in a fight. Aria was skilled enough with her spear to fill in for a Lancer’s consideration, and Catcher could help out when it came to studying up on taking on a sword-wielding Phalanx, but Rei had to admit they lacked a Mauler’s eye in their conversation, something that had been brought up not-infrequently before.
Given the nature of Shido’s growth, however, none of them had every managed to come up with the name of anyone they felt comfortable adding to their little group.
After their first training round was up, they changed, showered, and broke for dinner, wolfing down a quick meal of chicken parmigiana and pasta in the mess-hall as they discussed their pairings that coming Monday and Tuesday. Aria and Catcher felt confident enough with their brackets—having been matched with opponents they had no reason to think they couldn’t manage—so most of supper was spent focused on Viv and Rei’s potential trouble.
“I mean it’s not impossible,” Viv said for the seventh time that evening, handing her empty tray to a passing service bot and sounding more and more like she was trying to convince herself of the fact rather than anyone else. “Right? I’ve practically caught up to him in Rank. So what if he was in the summer training course?”
“It’s not impossible,” Aria agreed with a serious nod, offering her own tray, too. “You’ll just need to be careful, and be aware that you won’t be able to rely on the advantage of your Speed quite as much. Jack Benaly might be built like a wall, but he’s still a Brawler. He’ll be able to go toe-to-toe with your agility, and probably has better Endurance to boot.”
“Thanks,” Viv grumbled dejectedly. “Don’t know if that was supposed to make me feel better, though…”
Aria laughed, pushing her chair back to stand as she looked questioningly between them all and motioned towards the door. As Rei and Catcher nodded and got to their feet to join her, she kept on. “Don’t pout. You know that’s not what I meant. You’ve got plenty of other advantages to play into, and you’re a better fighter, Viv, simply put. Jack Benaly won’t know what hit him.”
Viv shrugged, clearly still unconvinced as she, too, stood.
“Maybe Rei should spend some extra time with her this weekend?” Catcher suggested to the group as they started for the mess hall exit. “Just to get her more used to fighting a—”
“No!”
The echoed answer came from Viv and Aria both, the two girls glaring back at Catcher while Rei led the way through the pine woods-section of the arboretum once more into the tropical area where most of the other first years typically ate.
“It was just a thought,” Catcher corrected himself quickly, tossing both hands in the air so that Arthus’ bands slipped down his wrists into his sleeves. “No need to take my head off, I promise.”
“Rei already has one loss,” Viv growled, apparently not remotely placated by the Saber’s show of submission. “If he gets another, he’s out of the running completely. He needs as much time pitted against the biggest challenge we can get him. Presently, that’s Aria.”
“That’s me,” Aria herself agreed. The statement wasn’t haughty or self-important. It was merely fact, a truth they were all intimately aware of.
Rei gave a light laugh as he dodged Sam Dorne walking by with a teetering tray of food, accompanying a girl he didn’t know. “Lay off Catcher, guys. He’s got a point.” He looked around at Viv behind him. “It won’t kill me to take an hour or two to work with you over the weekend. If anything—” he had to put an emphasis on the words as both Viv and Aria seemed ready to interrupt him “—your Speed matches Aria’s, and your fighting style is closest to a Brawler’s. It might do me some good in preparation for Warren.”
Viv continued to look unconvinced, but Aria seemed suddenly less sure of herself.
The discussion lasted them the brisk walk back to East Center, hands in their pockets and chins tucked against an evening wind that was particularly cold in the artificially early sunset provided by Castalon’s encircling presence around the school. It took Rei and Catcher both to convince Viv to accept Rei’s help, only managing it with a further heavy emphasis on the fact that changing partners up was not without its advantages to all parties involved. By the time they reached the training facility and changed once more back into the they grey-and-red combat suits, Viv had finally caved.
“Fine, fine!” she threw her hands up in surrender as they exited into the Center’s main hall and made for their training room. “I give up! I will graciously accept your assistance and wisdom, oh wise and powerful Reidon.”
Rei grimaced in amusement, not looking back around at her. “I don’t know… That didn’t sound very ‘gracious’ at all to me. What do you think, Catcher?”
“Not gracious in the least!” the Saber echoed dutifully.
“You two are going to rightfully earn yourself each half of Gemela in the back, one night,” Aria said with a laugh even as Viv started something much to the same purpose. “I wouldn’t blame her either, if you keep up this—”
She cut herself short, though, as they came up to the room. With the fading of the day, many of the enthusiastic cadets who had previously occupied the rest of the East Center’s field had called it an evening, likely with much self-congratulations and bolstered confidence in their futures as Users. There were still a few fields occupied, of course, but all of these rooms were—like Rei and the other’s kept theirs when training—set to opaque walls that barely allowed for any more than a blurred silhouette and maybe the faint streak of some particularly bright vysetrium. The other unused chambers were dark, their solar lights having dimmed to off not long after whatever occupants had previously been putting them to use had vacated. It was, for this reason, especially odd that the room the four of them tended to prefer was not only well-lit, but had also had its smart-glass walls set to clear.
It made the two figures conversing on the other side of the wall, near the edge of the field perimeter closest to the ajar door, immediately identifiable despite being turned slightly away from them.
“Holy hell…” Catcher whispered in disbelief.
He was the only one among them who managed to get so much as a word out.
Slowly, tentatively, Rei approached the entrance to the room, pushing the cracked door further open as he took an uneasy step inside, his eyes never leaving the two people. He must have made some noise he didn’t notice, because the pair cut off whatever quiet discussion they had been having to look around at him and the others.
Valera Dent, as was her habit greeted the four of them with the faintest hint of a smile.
“Good evening, cadets. I was getting worried you would pick this night in particular to skip your usual hours.”
She was dressed in her regulars, complete with cap and the red-on-white armband below her left shoulder. She stood with her arms crossed—cutting a casual air that made it clear this was an informal visit—and around her wrists the white vysetrium in Kestrel’s bands shone bright against its blue-and-red steel.
For once, however, it was not the Iron Bishop that drew the attention in the room.
“Holy shit…” Catcher could be heard muttering again as he too, undoubtedly, took in the second, slighter figure standing by the captain’s side.
The young man was an inch or two shorter than the woman, this accentuated by the fact that he was not wearing a military cap. He wasn’t wearing any article of ISCM regulars, in fact, standing at ease by Dent instead in the red-on-blue combat uniform of a third year cadet. He had dark, almost-black skin, complemented by designed blue eyes and deep-grey hair threaded into dreads now tied behind his head in a short tail. His face was soft—strangely so for a User who underwent int
ense physical training—and his shoulders were narrow, making him seem almost diminutive in stature alongside the presence of the Iron Bishop.
And yet, despite this, it remained a fact Rei—and no doubt Aria, Viv, and Catcher right along with him—had recognized the young man before he’d so much as turned to face them.
“Christopher Lennon…” Aria was the one to speak this time, so quietly she sounded like the name might have been a slip of the tongue.
At her words, Lennon looked directly at her. “You know me? Good. That will keep introductions simpler.” He studied her a moment more before speaking again. “Aria Laurent. Phalanx. C3.” His blue eyes flicked to Viv. “Viviana Arada. Duelist. C0.” He turned to Catcher. “Layton Catchwick. Saber. D9.” Then, finally, his cool gaze—steady as that of a predator that did not belong in his slighter frame and build—fell on Rei. “And Reidon Ward. A-Type. Also D9.”
After this listing, there was a quiet pause that might have been misconstrued as awkwardness by an uninformed observer.
Anyone who could have glimpsed the thoughts of Rei or any of his friends, however, would have known the lot of them to be merely dumbstruck by the fact that Christopher Lennon—“the Lasher” himself—knew their faces from the door they still all stood dumbly in front of.
Eventually Valera Dent seemed to take pity on them, though when she spoke it was with a much more pronounced smile. “Close your mouths, you lot. You’ll drool on the projection plating. We have barely two hours until your curfew sounds, and I’d like to take advantage of every minute possible.”
“T-Take advantage, ma’am?” Rei stammered, only able to look away from Lennon for more than a glance as he struggled to process what she had said. His mind was a muddle. Despite his Cognition, he couldn’t decide if he should be trying harder not to stare, if he should be saluting the captain, or if he should be pulling his pad out to ask the third year for his autograph.
“Yes, Ward. I’m hijacking your extra training hours tonight. I’ve decided you four—” she waved a hand to indicate him and the others without uncrossing her arms “—are in need of a challenge. Something to really get your engines going.”
“A-A challenge, ma’am?” It was Aria’s turn to stammer, though Rei was convinced she had to be doing a better job of not gaping as she asked.
“Me.” Christopher Lennon said simply, looking slowly between them all again.
There was a moment of truly stunned silence this time.
“What…?” Viv’s squeak of incomprehension—and maybe a little apprehension—broke the quiet.
Captain Dent smirked. “You heard him, Arada. Cadet Lennon here has graciously agreed to do me a favor. You four have been training against each other for some time now. I decided you needed a change-up.”
“Against him?” Catcher demanded in a hiss. “All due respect ma’am… Are you trying to kill us?”
For the first time, Lennon showed a hint of amusement, one corner of his lip lifting into a crooked smile. “Hardly any danger of that in sparring matches, isn’t there, Catchwick? Or do they no longer teach the basics of phantom-calls in first year anymore?”
“Don’t tease them,” Dent told him, but she looked to be hiding her own amusement as she looked to Catcher. “Kill you, Catchwick? No. Not at all.” Her face grew suddenly serious. “Push you? Yes. Hone you, yes? Temper you all into something more than you are now? Yes.”
“In two hours?” Rei asked her, not understanding.
“For starters,” the captain answered back cryptically. “You might be surprised what two hours can teach you, under the right circumstances.”
“That’s assuming you have those two hours, ma’am,” Lennon said without looking away from where he’d taken to studying Rei. “At this rate we’ll be lucky to finish warmups before you have to send them to the showers.”
“True enough,” Dent agreed with a nod, meeting Rei, Aria, Viv, and Catcher’s eyes one after the other. “It’s hardly my intention to force this on any of you. I can guess that by your responses, you all have some idea of what is about to happen. If any of you would rather spend your evening otherwise, I’ll arrange for combat simulations on another field.” She paused, letting the offer sink in. “Anyone want to get off this train?”
“No, ma’am!”
The response was immediate and collective, Rei and the others all straightening to attention at once at the woman’s question. They might have shared in mutual disbelief—they were standing in the same room as the Lasher, after all—but Rei knew that not one among them was fool enough to pass up such an opportunity, unexpected as it might be.
Dent looked to repress another smile.
“Good. I thought not.”
A brief flash of her NOED, and behind her the field came to life, blooming solid white for a moment before five red starting circles appeared in the projection, four staggered at even points 5 yards from the inside of each cardinal direction along the perimeter, with the final dead center in the middle of the combat zone.
“I think you can figure out your positions, right?” the captain asked when the field was through manifesting.
“Are… Are we taking him on all at once?” Viv’s question came tentative. She might ordinarily have been the fiery one among their group, but at the moment she seemed to have all the fight of a kitten.
Even Viv, apparently, needed no clueing in as to what they were about to face.
“If you had half your class with you, it still wouldn’t be enough, Arada,” Lennon told her plainly, turning away from them and taking a step up onto the field. Just like Aria’s early statement, there was nothing conceited about the proclamation, no bravado.
It was—as they all knew—merely a fact.
Lennon was in the center of the space before any of the four of them had reached their own starting rings, arms loose by his sides and watching them spread out around him after dropping their bags by the door to climb onto the field. When Aria—who’d made for the furthest ring across the perimeter—finally reached her place, he turned in a slow circle to address them all.
“First, you’ll show me what you can do. One at a time. I’ve seen you fight, but that’s hardly any way to take your measure. Besides—” his eyes fell briefly on Rei “—there’s always the chance one or two of you might have learned a new trick since the start of the week.”
He smirked, apparently unsurprised as all three of the others glanced at Rei in mutual surprise.
Then his gaze flicked to Catcher. “You. Catchwick. Come at me with everything you’ve got.”
“Uh, m-me…?” Catcher asked, pointing dumbly at himself as his face paled.
In answer, however, Lennon looked to Dent, standing silently at the edge of the field. After a moment’s hesitation, the captain nodded.
Instantly, Lennon vanished.
WHAM!
Catcher went flying, impacted by the third year’s punch with all of the force of an orbital train. He slammed into the invisible wall nearly 10 yards at his back so hard the projection actually warped outward a bit, then rebounded, tossing him into the boundary like the field were spitting him onto the floor in disappointment.
“Is there another Catchwick in this room, first year?” Lennon asked evenly of the gasping, wheezing boy, red light fading from his eyes.
Rei’s hands had gone numb. He should have been concerned, should have been worried as Catcher struggled to breath, rolling slowly over onto his hands and knees. The Saber coughed, then gagged, one hand coming up to clutch at the fabric of his combat suit just below his chest. Rei should have been worried.
But all he could do was stare.
It had been so fast. Lennon had triggered a Break Step, sure, but Rei hadn’t so much as seen him move. What was more, the third year hadn’t called on his Device, at least not fully. There had been no physical summoning, phantom or otherwise, the red glow which had already winked out in the older boy’s eyes the only hint that h
e’d used anything more than his natural ability to move.
He had tapped into that much Speed with nothing but the barest brushing of his CAD’s potential.
“If this is how serious you’re going to take me, then maybe I should have introduced myself,” Lennon decided aloud, looking around at Rei and the others as Catcher continued the fruitless fight to find his feet. “My name is Christopher Lennon, though you might know me as ‘the Lasher’. I’m an A-Type, like Cadet Ward here. My CAD-Rank—” he smiled a little as he spoke, the predator roaring forth in his gaze again as he looked at Rei “—is A8.”
*****
What followed were the 2 most grueling hours of Rei’s—and he suspected any of his friends’—life. Forget the pain of post-op recovery. Forget the fatigue of Michael Bretz’ training, or the intensity of the Intra-School fights. Despite everything they brought to bear, not only did all four of them together fail to put so much as a single scratch on Lennon, but they did so in cohesion with the fact that the third year never once called on his CAD again for the duration of the training session, not even partially.
For the first half hour or so Lennon took them on individually in bouts of several minutes, shouting and goading them into challenging him with everything they had. Despite having no assistance from his Device, there was no doubt he allowed Rei and the others to dance around the field with him for a bit each time, always ending the practice bouts brutally, oftentimes resulting in the registration of concussions, broken bones, or ruptured organs despite the fact Lennon was using nothing more than his bare fists to fight. All the while, too, the young man kept a steady, inscrutable expression, the only shifting in his face coming as a slightly raised eyebrow when Rei called on Shido for the first time, the Device whirling into its newly mirrored form around his arms. Of course, this didn’t make any difference in the outcome of their bout, nor their next three.
Iron Prince: A Progression Sci-Fi Epic (Warformed: Stormweaver Book 1) Page 74