Guest paused, allowing his magnified words to resonate over the crowd, now silent again.
Then, when he seemed sure he had gotten his point across, he smiled once more.
“And so, without further fanfare… Cadet Caleb Ensure! Cadet Wattana Jelani! Please approach the field!”
Not long after, the final day of the opening week of the Intra-Schools started with a roar.
*****
The first match of the afternoon was an absolute massacre, at least in Rei’s opinion. It might have seemed a balanced fight if one judged only by the full 3 minutes it took Wattana Jelani—a Saber—to plant her two-handed greatsword into Caleb Ensure’s gut, but the reality of the exchange was that Jelani had only been taking her time with the heavyset Brawler. Despite the weight of her orange-and-white weapon, the girl had wielded it with deadly skill, deflecting and redirecting every punch Ensure threw at her with ease, right up until the perfect moment arrived. Then, as though it was nothing more than an afterthought, Jelani stepped into her opponent’s swing and ran him through with deft grace, putting an abrupt end to the fight.
The next match too, was a bit one-sided, as was the third. After that, though, there was a solid string of consecutive pairings that had the crowd on their feet more than once as the combatants blurred and blazed across different fields, their arsenal of Devices flaring lights of every color through forests and cliffs and buildings, then over snow-blown ice and ocean tides. The Flood Zone field made an appearance again, this time as a tidal rush of water passing under a stone bridge that looked to be moments from being swept away. The two cadets who had their stand there—a Mauler and Duelist named Schmidt and Heatley respectively—had to battle an ugly mess of wind, rain, and slick footing as their CADs lit the grey storm in arcs and flashes.
That was one of the fights that had gotten a standing ovation, when Heatley had used a rare Ability called “Puppeteer” to remove himself from his armor, leaving an autonomous shell that ended up getting ahold of Schmidt’s legs and immobilizing him just long enough to lose the Mauler the match.
In the end, the colonel’s fear of misplaced attention turned out to be baseless. The third years—even the weaker end of the class—all made a good showing, not a single User allowing their fight to be ignored in favor of a future treat. One by one the bouts came and went, and one by one the applause rose for the winners, in tandem with sympathy for the losers. Over the course of three hours or so Rei sat in rigid attention as he had the opportunity to see names he knew fight, and even more to learn some fresh ones. Lana Archer—to Viv’s great delight—proved an absolute menace with a pair of blades she applied Magnetic Hunt beautifully, trapping her opponent by willing her Device to close in on him from both directions. The underdog Noah Wagner surprised everyone when he viciously battled his way into overcoming a Phalanx that was four ranks higher than him. Saber Samar Bandi ended his bout in less than 10 seconds, triggering a Break Step right out the gate that—judging by the shouts of enjoyment from the third year section at this—was a recent evolution, and certainly a surprise to his opponent.
One by one the bouts came and went.
The thirty-first fight of the afternoon was a particularly enjoyable one. Two Phalanxes named Liu Jie and Paul Williams—both A4s—faced off on a variation of the Neutral Zone, the entire zone one flat plane other than a single thick pillar of white in the very center of the circle. More than once Rei had glanced over to see if Aria was watching as intently as he hoped, because the battle was a perfect chance to check out exactly what higher-levels of her Type could do when going on the offensive. It took nearly 10 minutes of back and forth, but even as defensive specialists neither of the two Users ever allowed themselves to completely wall up, ever allowed themselves to be driven too far back towards the walls. Jie employed Mirage several times over the course of the match, which Williams handled with well-timed triggers of his Third Eye—the only other cadet Rei had seen all week with Aria’s Ability. In the end, both Phalanxes called on Overclock as they entered the 9th minute, and the stands were on their feet well-before the match ended, the crowds howling with glee and awe as the pair cut and slashed and slammed into each other with terrifying, breathtaking power.
Eventually, though, it was Williams who was left standing, thrusting his spear in the air over Jie’s fallen form before promptly keeling over from exhaustion just as the Arena called out his victory.
“And a wonderful showing from our second-to-last combatants!” Rama Guest rumbled as the two third years reached the projection plating together, both staying prone for a few seconds while they caught their breath. Despite his earlier implication of his lack of ability, the colonel had proven as capable an announcer as any of the other commentators all week. “It goes to show that Phalanxes aren’t all shield, and it’s important to remember that you sometimes have to get aggressive if you don’t want to get knocked on your tail!”
There was a light rolling of laughter from the crowd—something Guest had achieved several times over the course of the afternoon.
“Isn’t the colonel a Lancer?” Viv asked over the noise. “What’s with his thing for Phalanxes? That’s like the fifth time he’s talked them up today.”
Rei only grinned and shrugged, looking sidelong and being utterly unsurprised to find Aria hiding her face with the brim of her cap as the cheek he could see flared red with quiet embarrassment.
“Now then!” Guest resumed after the laughter had subsided a little. “You have all been patient! You have all been enthusiastic! I could not have asked for anything more from the proud students of this school!” Though he spoke in the jovial exultations of an announcer, perhaps out of habit the man had come to stand at ease with his chin up, and he very much cut the image of Galens’ Command Officer despite his smile. “As promised—if by absence alone—there is one last fight for you all to enjoy today. One last match for you—every one of you, now, without exception—to learn from.” Guest raised one hand. “From the right, allow me to introduce Cadet Annika Ivanov!”
Immediately a tall, slender girl appeared from under the edge of the walkway, striding forward with stern confidence as her black hair, streaked with artful white lines, swayed in a braided plait behind her neck. There was a healthy toll of clapping and whistling, mostly from what was likely Ivanov’s class block among the third years, picked up by others in the crowd.
All eyes, though, were only on her until the colonel lifted his other hand.
“And from the left, Cadet Christopher ‘Lasher’ Lennon!”
The eruption of heightened applause that followed Lennon’s name didn’t wait for the boy to step out into the open. People in every class, first, second, and third alike, were on their feet as he made his appearance, walking towards the west edge of the field. It took Rama Guest lifting both hands in the air with a commanding glare into the stands before the students—and some staff, Rei noted with amusement—settled again. Who could blame them, though? Lennon was the only cadet at Galens who bore an official field name, approved and sanctified by the ISCM. Most of the officers didn’t sport such an honor, and yet the unimposing boy with black skin and grey hair who now stood calmly just outside the perimeter of the Dueling ring had earned it.
And earned it as a second year User.
Once the crowd was calmed, Guest stepped back, allowing Reese to take command of the formalities for the thirty-second time that day.
“Combatants, take position.”
Together Lennon and Ivanov crossed the silver line and made their way to their respective starting circles. The moment they stood within the red markers, the major continued briefly.
“This is as an official Duel. Do you condone and agree to the rules of this fight?”
Two nods. So opposed to the intensity of the enthusiasm not a handful of seconds ago, the tension of the silence now felt like it could be tasted on the air.
Reese’s eye flared, and the field began to change.
<
br /> It was immediately apparent—at least to anyone who had been keeping up with the professional circuits of late—what the zone was going to be. Instead of an upwards swelling of color and material like there usually was, the projection plating seemed to vanish as its black faded into absolute darkness, like a bottomless pit. Lennon and Ivanov, meanwhile, started to rise, each lifted above that void atop a hunk of warped scrap metal. As they climbed, more such junk materialized in the emptiness around them, and by the time they came to a hovering stop 10 feet above the field enough of the scene had come together to form a full picture as what looked like a broken, crumbling ship floated slowly across the backdrop of the projection.
A space wreckage.
“Field: Zero-Grav.”
The Arena’s cool voice cleaved through the palpable, vibrating quiet of the stands, managing to draw out two or three excited shouts here and there, but only those few.
Everyone else was busy watching Lennon and Ivanov drift off their respective hunks of debris, the physics of the zone taking over even before they got their devices out.
“Cadet Annika Ivanov versus Cadet Christopher ‘Lasher’ Lennon. Combatants… Call.”
That, Rei knew, was the moment the spectators got their first taste of the experience they had been anticipating all day.
Ivanov, it transpired, was a Lancer, but clearly not just any Lancer. Almost every third year had had a completed Device—the full armor that covered every inch of their skin in addition to their weapons—but Ivanov’s proved… something else. As the CAD whirled into being from the bands around her wrists, the girl appeared to grow.
No… She actually did grow, Rei realized.
Such a change wasn’t abnormal, to a certain degree. Shido added a solid half-inch of height to his still-short frame, after all. Ivanov’s Device, on the other hand, swelled in a way that no one would have classified as “normal”.
The CAD was formed of silver-and-white steel accented with purple vysetrium. It manifested in layers of plating, the pieces looping and locking into themselves until the girl’s slender frame had broadened to more than half her original width again. She grew taller too—though it was a little bit harder to tell free-floating like she was—the Device’s feet elongating slightly as clawed, weight-bearing toes made their appearance. The helm came into being last, a slim framing of metal that first tapered, then widened again at the top, the forward edge of which was lined in a glow of purple. In her right hand a halberd with a blade that might have been the size of Rei’s whole body came up to be taken in a double grip, held before the girl defensively.
All in all, the Device was an impressive piece of tech, clearly sporting evolutions for Speed and Defense that probably outstripped most other Lancers of Ivanov’s age.
It was almost a pity, therefore, that the opponent she faced that day was aptly called “the Lasher”.
Lennon’s Device had not expanded his form, as far as Rei could tell. The black steel, interlaced over a grey underlay, had not made him taller or broader or more menacing. If anything, in fact, the boy’s armor very much matched his usual physical appearance: unimpressive, unintimidating. Even the glowing red of the vysetrium wouldn’t have helped, though the trio of illuminated lines that cut vertically down the clean metal of his oblong helmet did have a certain flair to it.
There were, however, two things that did make Christopher Lennon stand out from the crowd.
The first came in the form of a mirrored trio of black-and-red modules that hovered just behind him, one longer, broader shape like a shield floating above his upper back, the other two angular, outwardly pointing triangles a little closer to his shoulders. The externals didn’t move, didn’t so much as twitch from their position, so still was Lennon keeping even as he floated.
The other difference of note, of course, were the weapons.
“Holy hell…” Viv could be heard whispering at Rei’s left.
Christopher Lennon was a true A-Type, the wielder of a Device that did not physically fit any classification among the other standard Types. Instead of a blade or spear or hammer, a thin hilt was held in each of his fists from which a long, drifting tail of black steel and red light floated in the zero-gravity environment. About 12 feet in length each, the weapons would best have been described as massive, flat swords that had been broken into even, angled segments, until Lennon was left with two chain-like apparatuses with razored edges and broad, tapered points. With the barest flick up of his wrists the third year drew the floating steel linkings closer, the weapons drifting upward like the universe’s most dangerous rope cast to water.
Abruptly, in the space of the blink that was all it took for a Device to be called on, “the Lasher” had come to be among them in truth.
“Combatants… Fight.”
CLANG!
It was Ivanov who made the opening move. The moment the match start was announced, she twisted her halberd and punched it into the torn platform of metal she’d been slowly drifting away from. Sinking the purple blade in deep enough to get traction, she pulled herself down until her broad clawed toes made the surface.
Then, almost as soon as she’d landed, she was gone again.
“WHOA!” Catcher yelled, taken aback, and Aria and Viv both gasped.
Rei made no sound, however. He was too focused on trying to see everything, to take in every moment, every second of what he could tell was about to be a titanic matching.
Clearly the mass of the wreckage Ivanov had launched from had been enough to bear her weight, because it only drifted slightly away as the girl catapulted across open space in a silver-white blur, as bright and powerful as some great steel arrow fired from history’s most terrifying ballista. The purple halberd led the assault, bearing down on Lennon with all speed.
So when he twisted aside in midair—echoing a short pulse of his externals—to let Ivanov flash by him into nothingness, it was with such snapping reflex that Rei thought he’d blinked and missed it.
Ivanov must have anticipated this, however, because when she slammed into the invisible wall of the field perimeter it was with both feet, and she was lancing at the Lasher again so soon after she might as well have just rebounded right off the projection. Again Lennon skated aside, then a third time when the girl ricocheted off a passing hunk of hull, then a forth when she launched from the wall again.
The fifth pass couldn’t have happened 6 seconds into the match.
Rei had never witnessed anything like it. Never. He’d seen a few matches on the Zero-Grav field before, but most had been inside ships’ hulls that had been simulated to have lost their artificial gravity, allowing for more intimate combat. Here, though, the open vacuum of space called for something altogether different, and Ivanov was using the lack of friction and the power of her Device’s adapted legs to great advantage.
Meanwhile Lennon had done nothing more than engage his modules to move him this way and that just enough to miss death by inches every time.
It was on the sixth pass that the game changed. Ivanov cut at Lennon horizontally this time, and at last the chain-swords came to life. With a ripping jerk of one arm the drifting steel blades sped upward in a blur, moving with such force they deflected the slash. Ivanov wasn’t done, though, because her halberd almost immediately sank into a passing mass of steel and loose wires. The debris accepted her weight, allowing her to spin around the haft of her weapon like a gymnast and bring both legs wheeling about at Lennon’s face. The Lasher blocked with crossed arms, and though he himself didn’t look to so much as wince under the blow, the impetus of it sent him tumbling head-over-heels through space with dizzying speed. Ivanov found her footing—standing almost upside down to Rei and the other spectators’ perspective—then launched off again, clearly hoping to take advantage of what had to have been a loss of her opponent’s bearings.
Unfortunately for her, she’d underestimated who it was she was facing.
An instant before the
Lancer’s halberd might have cut into Lennon’s body, his form seemed to expand outward with explosive growth. One moment he’d been a tumbling figure heading for the wall, and the next he was a flashing, rippling sphere of black and red.
Red?
Rei understood just as Ivanov’s weapon pinged away, and it was only with a violent bend and twist of her own body that the girl managed to avoid getting cut to ribbons. She hit the wall before Lennon, but leapt clear of the blurred shape that was the young man before he collided with the limit of the projection himself.
Collided, but only after snapping his chain-swords out and away to keep them from collapsing in on him.
It was awesome, seeing it now, realizing the optical illusion. Lennon had likely lost his bearings—at least for a moment—tumbling as he’d been. It hadn’t mattered, however, because he had started swinging, whirling his fluid weapons about himself with such blinding speed that the trailing metal and vysetrium had briefly looked like a rough shell about his body, practically impenetrable even as he’d flew.
Iron Prince: A Progression Sci-Fi Epic (Warformed: Stormweaver Book 1) Page 76