“Why the hell would the colonel order Reese to mess with Rei’s pairings?”
The question had Aria blink, then frown, like she wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. After a moment she looked up and around at Viv.
“… What?”
“I said why the hell would Guest order Rei’s pairing be messed with?”
“No, I know that’s what you said, I just…” Aria peered at Viv like she wasn’t sure if she was being toyed with. “Did you not hear me? I just told you I’m the command officer’s niece.”
It was Viv’s turn to look perplexed, and she glanced from Aria to Catcher to Rei in confusion.
“Uh… Sorry… Was that supposed to be a secret?”
Aria’s jaw dropped, and Rei almost laughed out loud, only partially managing to stifle it with a hand. From her other side, Catcher, too, was looking at her with confused amusement.
“Is that what you’ve been tiptoeing around for the last couple of months?” He chuckled when Aria’s face snapped to him, her expression still one of utter shock. “Girlfriend, people have seen you coming in and out of the administrative building since before school started. Same thing with you walking around with Maddison Kent, and having morning practice sessions with the colonel over the summer.”
“Th-They did?” Aria stuttered, her face flushing.
Catcher snorted, eye blazing as he pulled up his NOED. “Yeah. Combine that with the fact that if you search the feeds for the names ‘Laurent’ and ‘Guest’, you get a bunch of articles about ‘Comrades Carmen Laurent and Rama Guest’ from their time on a SCT-squad together at Galens.” It only took him a moment to find what he was looking for, then with a swipe of his hand he shared several screens with the group. Rei abruptly found himself looking at a number of pictures of two young men, one obviously a youthful colonel Guest, the other sporting a laughing expression and familiar green eyes.
Aria, seeing these, looked something between amazed and mortified.
“Oh, that’s not even how I put it together,” Viv said, a small smile breaking her anger as she shared her own frame. “Dig a little deeper and you find this.”
Another screen popped into being in Rei’s vision, and after a moment’s perusal he did, actually, laugh this time.
It was an announcement piece from an Astra sector’s local news, declaring the birth of one “Aria Meredith Laurent”, complete with a list of her parents, her two siblings, and her godfather, Rama Guest.
In big, bold-ass letters.
Aria had apparently had enough. With a moan she brought her hands up to cover her face under the brim of her cap.
“Oh noooo…” she groaned. “No no no no…”
This time all three of the others laughed, but it was on Rei that her attention fell when she peered out through her fingers.
“Tell me you didn’t know. If you knew and didn’t say anything, Rei, I swear on the MIND I will stick Hippolyta so far up your—!”
“I didn’t know!” Rei exclaimed at once, grinning as he brought his hands up placatingly. “I promise, I didn’t know! Catcher has more friends than all of us put together, and Viv is nosy. Plus, you’d already told me before I got curious enough to start digging!”
“Hey!” Viv turned on him. “Rude!”
“But accurate,” Catcher said under his breath, pretending to be fascinated with the ceiling fixtures when she whirled on him.
“Fine…” Aria said, though Rei wasn’t sure if she was telling that to him or herself, given she still hadn’t pulled her hands from her face. “Fine… But still…” She looked to Viv and Catcher. “It doesn’t… It doesn’t bother you?”
“What does?” the two asked together.
“Well… I got into Galens… And… Well… The commanding officer of the school is my uncle…”
The pair stared at her for a solid few seconds, then each other in the same way, then at her again.
“Aria…” Viv looked like she was trying to suppress a real grin, this time. “What was your score on the written part of the Assignment Exam?”
Aria finally pulled her fingers from her cheeks, though she kept them tucked under her chin like she expected to need to hide behind them again at any moment.
Cute as fu—
Rei had to pretend to cough to keep from staring, hoping no one noticed the heat in his own cheeks.
“Just under ninety-seven percent…” Aria answered. “Why?”
Catcher snorted. “And have you ever—ever—lost a fight here at school?”
“Yeah. Lots.”
Not having expected this answer, even Rei looked around to gape at her again.
“Against who?” Viv demanded in disbelief.
“The colonel. When we had our morning practice sessions. He always managed to—Why are you all laughing?!”
Indeed, Rei, Viv, and Catcher had all burst into hysterics a second time, Catcher’s guffaw so loud Rei thought it was a miracle no one from the stands above came running to see what the hell was going on.
“Let’s try that again,” Rei finally decided to join in, still chuckling. “Aria… Have you ever lost a fight here at school against anyone not an S-Ranked User?”
“Oh…” Aria immediately saw her mistake. In her embarrassment her voice looked to have abandoned her, because after a little bit she only shook her head.
“Exactly,” Viv said, gesturing with her hands to indicate this settled the matter. “So consider you could wipe the floor with anyone who might want to throw a hissy-fit about it, and get over your incredibly over-anxious fears of being ousted for nepotism, Aria.”
Another pause.
And finally a single, clear nod.
“Good,” Viv said, still smiling. Then, though, the amusement slipped from her face a bit. “Still, though… You haven’t answered my question.”
It was a testament to them all, Rei thought, that the feeling in the room didn’t slip right back into the over-boiling tension of a minute before. The laughter had cleared the air a bit, leaving them somewhat more even-headed to tackle the unfortunate reason they were all gathered together in the first place, there in the clean red-and-black of the professional’s locker room. Aria, too, must have felt it, because it was with less apprehension now that she responded, finally dropping her hands to her sides again.
“It wasn’t by choice.”
“The order?” Catcher asked. “To redo the brackets?”
Aria nodded. “Yeah. It wasn’t by choice. Maddie—Maddison Kent, sorry—told me he got a call. Last night.”
“From who?” Viv asked, astonished. “Who the hell would order the colonel to do something like that?”
“Who the hell could, more like,” Catcher mumbled, sounding equally astounded.
Rei, though, thought he was piecing together the puzzle.
There was, after all, only one place in the Intersystem Collective likely to take such interest in the minutia of the military academies, even one with a reputation like Galens. There were thousands of generals on the front lines—and another few hundred patrolling the systems and managing planetary security within them—but those men and women were unlikely to have had the time to divest in tracking the progress of a single CAD and its User.
There was only once place.
“Central Command,” Aria answered.
Though he’d known it was coming, Rei discovered himself no more prepared to hear the words out loud than either Viv or Catcher. Together they gawked at Aria in shared bafflement, unable to speak.
“Central…” Viv finally managed to get out. “As in… Earth’s Central?”
Aria just nodded, and Rei found himself in need of taking a deep, shaking breath as she, Viv, and Catcher all turned slowly to look at him, now.
He supposed he’d known it was coming. There was no way it wasn’t right? Shido had now grown twenty-five ranks in just around 6 months. That wasn’t just unheard of. It was unbelievable. Viv—who
had above-average Growth—had climbed from D6 to C3 in the same amount of time. By the second quarter of next year, she would be in the high Bs, probably, and the year after that would be competing at this exact tournament as a User likely in the middle As. That was impressive enough.
Rei, though, might be an A by the end of his first two terms at Galens, if Shido continued on its current ascent…
“They have to have had their eye on me for a while,” he told the others. “Probably from the very beginning, if I’m being honest.”
He was sure of it, in fact, recalling the astonishment Albert Connelly had displayed upon seeing Shido’s S-Ranked Growth. If some part of the exam system hadn’t automatically flagged him on assignment, there was no way the major himself wouldn’t have reported such an incredible occurrence…
Or the MIND itself…
Neither Aria, Viv, nor Catcher was fool enough to disagree with him.
“But why get involved now?” the latter asked them, looking around at the group. His yellow eyes were bright again, thankfully, no longer robbed of their usual energy by his loss. “They’ve been hands-off for months, haven’t they? It’s been half a year since assignment….”
“They haven’t,” Aria shook her head. “Not exactly. They’re the reason Reese stopped skewing the fights against Rei in the first place.”
This came as a surprise even to Rei. “They were? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I shouldn’t be telling you this,” Aria said, almost pleading. “None of this. You guys need to understand that half the stuff I know I’m not even sure Maddie is really supposed to be aware of. If it got out, the best outcome would be that she gets fired and my uncle gets dishonorably discharged.”
“Are they crazy, then?” Viv asked, staring at Aria. “Why would they tell you these things?!”
“Because they trust me. Because they trust how I’ll use the information.” She allowed herself a small smirk. “Still sure I shouldn’t be worried about nepotism?”
“Not so much, no,” Viv said with a strained smile. “Then the question that bares: Why are you telling us?”
The answer came without pause.
“Because I trust you.”
For the first time in a while, while watching Viv and Catcher look like something had caught in both their throats simultaneously, Rei was struck by Connelly’s words to him, and he allowed himself a crooked smile.
Good friends can be hard to find.
“They were testing him.”
Catcher had pressed on from the embarrassment of being so heartily touched by Aria’s statement by returning to the issue at hand.
“They were testing him,” he said again when he’d gained their collected attention once more. “To see if he had a killer instinct.”
“Definitely,” Aria agreed with a nod. “Maddie didn’t hear the exact conversation, but it was obvious the general my uncle spoke to was pretty clear about that.”
“After stopping Reese?” Viv asked. “Initially, I mean? Isn’t that… well… backpedaling?”
“That’s exactly how the colonel put it, apparently. He wasn’t pleased with the order. Maddie wanted me—us, actually, I think—to know that.”
Rei nodded on his bench. He had to admit, it made him feel a little better about the whole thing. Knowing why something was happening always helped, especially if that reason turned out to have a more concrete base than the unfortunate luck of having an officer on staff who’d happened to take a disliking to him. He wasn’t as surprised as Viv, either, at the reversal. Shido’s growth rate meant the CAD was a different beast now that it had been even 3 weeks ago. He could see the logic in the decision, understand the reasoning. Had he been disqualified from the tournament too early, then Central’s ability to observe his developing strength would have been castrated. Now that he’d made it this far, though…
Now, just as Catcher had deduced, was the time to start testing him.
Well… he supposed he couldn’t disappoint them, could he?
Aria, Catcher, and Viv were talking heatedly, debating what Central was about and discussing the military’s interest in him. Leaving the three of them at it, Rei pulled up his upgrade notification again, staring at the last line for a while.
CAD “Shido” has been upgraded from Rank C2 to C3.
Just under 2 weeks. It had taken him just under 2 weeks to make that jump, to seize at what he’d thought was his last chance. It was Tuesday afternoon, though. Only Tuesday afternoon. Even if his final Intra-School match was scheduled for the following Monday, he had the better part of 6 days…
Rei grimaced, considering it. He and the others already pushed themselves to their limit, didn’t they? Every opportunity they got they trained, didn’t they? Every day, every spare moment.
But no… Not every spare moment.
Closing the upgrade notification, Rei watched Aria, Viv, and Catcher talking, Viv gesturing animatedly with her hands as she continued to question Central’s interference in the SCT. He wondered what they would say, if they could read his mind right now? If he told them of the insanity he was considering? Would they support him? Would they back him up?
He didn’t know. He’d already been warned once in the last week that he shouldn’t push himself too hard, in fact.
And yet…
It was Catcher Rei’s eyes fell on. Catcher, who had just been disqualified from the tournament not by any fault or lack of effort on his part, but because of having the misfortunate of being Rei’s only friend left in the pairings. It was bullshit. He agreed with both Viv and the Saber on that wholeheartedly. That his companions were the one’s suffering the consequences of his circumstances now made him feel sick, and Logan Grant’s sneering face, telling him he was dead weight, swam before his eyes for a moment.
What right did he have to let anyone down anymore?
Cursing under his breath, Rei pulled up the clock function of his NOED and adjusted his alarm, silently apologizing to Christopher Lennon as he did. There was no helping it, though. C3 had borne with it no answers. Catcher had just been sacrificed to the cause. Rei had 6 days. 6 days he could use if he started right now.
When the alarm woke him at 0400 the next morning, he would tell himself it was only his part of the price to get stronger, with the others in his life have already paid theirs.
His uniform forgotten, Rei stood up abruptly, the motion so sudden it caught the other three off guard. They paused, looking around at him with a little alarm, but he spoke before any of them could ask what was going on.
“Aria, do you still have access to the subbasement fields?”
Aria blinked, having clearly not expected the question.
After a second she nodded. “I do… Why?”
“Because I need to use one.”
Aria frowned. “Rei, you just finished a match. You should take a break, recover a bit before you get your pairing for next—”
“No.” Rei shook his head firmly. “I’ll recover tonight. Right now I need to use a training field.”
Aria was about to argue further, but Viv stopped her with a hand on her arm.
It was Rei, though, that his best friend was looking at.
“Did you hit C3?”
Like I was made of glass, Rei cursed silently.
Then he nodded.
Aria and Catcher’s eyes widened a little, but before they could think to congratulate him Viv kept on.
“How long did it take?”
“Eleven days,” he answered honestly.
She watched him for a moment more, ignoring the slow build of confusion in the faces of the others.
“… Are you planning what I think you’re planning?” she finally asked.
Rei hesitated, seeing an argument coming at him at full speed.
Still, he nodded again.
Viv chewed on her tongue for another few seconds, refusing to look away from him while she considered.
Eventually her face broke into a pained kind of smile. “And you’re not going to get talked out of it, are you?”
“You’d have to drag me off kicking and screaming,” Rei confirmed, managing to return a weak grin.
Viv nodded slowly, then sighed. “Well I guess that’s that, then.” She looked to check her own time in her frame. “It’s almost 1800. I’ll smuggle some dinner out of the mess hall for you. You will eat, you understand me?” She paused. “And shower, on occasion.”
Rei nodded. Seemingly satisfied, Viv immediately turned and started for the door of the locker room again, but it was Aria’s turn to stop her.
“Wait. Hold on. What’s going on? Why are you having to smuggle food for him?”
“’Cause he’s not planning to leave the training fields until the last possible minute tonight.” It was Catcher who responded, his eyes on Rei, his expression a mix of exasperated and impressed. “And the same for every other night until the fight. Isn’t that right, Rei?”
“Mornings too,” Rei answered carefully.
Catcher grimaced, then, but to Rei’s surprise moved to collect his uniform from where he’d dropped it to the floor. Once he’d gathered up the various articles, boots in one hand and clothes over the other arm, he jerked his head at the door Viv was now standing by expectantly. “I’m not at your level anymore, but I’ll be a better partner than the simulations I bet you were planning on using. Besides,” he lifted an eyebrow at Rei, “you owe me a damn rematch.”
Something very much like relief—mixed with a healthy dose of gratitude—washed through Rei, and for a second he couldn’t speak. When he did, he was embarrassed to hear the hoarseness in his own voice.
“Thanks, man.”
“Wait.” Aria, it seemed, was the only one who hadn’t caught on yet. “Wait. What’s going on here? What the hell are you guys about?”
“Catcher’s volunteering to be the punching bag, and I’m gonna be the meal delivery service!” Viv called over her shoulder, already halfway out of the room as Rei and Catcher both started following her. “Do your part, Aria! Go get them a field!”
Iron Prince: A Progression Sci-Fi Epic (Warformed: Stormweaver Book 1) Page 91