by Simon Archer
“Gemma,” he said softly, “I understand.” I took a deep breath and shrunk back down to my normal five-foot stature so that he was now rubbing my shoulder soothingly. “I can’t condone anything, you know, and I also will state how delicate things are right now. You also know that I have brought this up with Inferno, and you know the only one who may be as protective of Nick as you are is him.”
“But in the end, if my intuition is right and she tries something, it’s my fault,” I pointed out as I clenched my fists. “I may not have killed Wrath or hurt her, she did that to herself, but still… it comes back to me and my actions.”
“Then what I suggest is to be ready, be alert,” Triton replied. “Don’t let Mother out of your sight for the remainder of the World’s Finest.” He stepped away to lean carefully on the battered desk as he dug in a pocket of his utility belt. “In fact, I spoke to Mrs. Brownstone, the Brand’s committee representative, and with her help, we had certain box arrangements… shuffled.” He pulled out a ticket and handed it to me. “For the Nemesis tournament, you and Mother will be in the same private box. If she is up to no good, I know you will see it and stop her.”
I took the ticket eagerly and grinned. “You know I will. I won’t let you or Nick down.”
Triton laughed and smiled. “Have you ever? If there is one thing I know in this world, it is that Amazoness is the one person I can always put faith in.”
25
I slept way better than I thought I would that night. Part of that was from how tired I was, certainly, and another was the fact that we all had separate rooms in the Fire Peaks Hotel. Let’s just say that my instincts leaned towards a special celebration with my Sun, Moon, and Stars that night. Still, despite the grumbling, we all slept in our own beds, and that was probably for the best, because I awoke refreshed and renewed, ready to start what could turn out to be the toughest stretch of the World’s Finest for me.
If this were anything like the rescue event, the entire series of one-on-one battles would be done in a single day, and that meant I would have one ‘easy’ match where I could use my full power. The rest, well, to make it to the end with an eight-person bracket would mean fighting two out of the three matches with only my natural talents and whatever gear the rules committee allowed.
It didn’t matter. I’d do my best, and that would have to be enough.
After a quick, happy breakfast with Kara, Andie, and Aylin, the entire team met back up for the hover-bus ride over to the Imperial Colosseum. Kristen and Eric joined into the usual banter, but it was clear that Matt was caught up in his own thoughts. As our co-captain, he was the other fighter in the nemesis round on our side, and I could understand how heavy a burden that had to be for him, especially as he didn’t even want to be in the spotlight in the first place.
Gemma cleared her throat as she stood in the aisle of the transport and smiled. She seemed a lot less nervous and a lot more focused today, more so than at any other time during the tournament.
“I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: congratulations, everyone. Regardless of how this last event goes, you’ve all stepped up and pushed yourselves above and beyond what we could have asked for.” She raised a finger. “But, we aren’t done yet.” Her gaze flitted from Matt to me and then back. “Matt, Nick, there are enough points on the table that either Carter or the Brand could win this. The champion takes twelve points, semi-finalists take nine, and quarter-finalists take seven, so even Kai-lao, if they get the championship and semi-finalists seat, could win.”
Kristen glanced at her brother with veiled concern. “You can do this.”
He nodded slowly while I nodded with more confidence.
“Do we have any more specifics on the bracket and rules for each match?” Kara asked as she glanced at me sidelong. “Are there any gear restrictions or the like?”
She was thinking the same as me, and as our technopath genius, Kara might just hold the keys to our victory if she was allowed to pass out equipment.
“Right, about that,” Gemma dug out her phone and tapped a few times on it. “We got a rules update from the commission early this morning. Patching it through the AV system of the bus… now.”
On her cue, monitors slid out of the roof before each seat and mini-speakers in each headrest crackled to life. Once more, we were greeted by our old friend, Patty Brownstone. It looked as if she were about to launch into her utterly practiced introduction again, but the scene abruptly shifted to a spot later in the video as Gemma fast-forwarded ahead.
“No need for anyone to hear that again,” she muttered as she hit play again.
“--nemesis rules update!” Patty cheered enthusiastically. “Considering the unique and accelerated nature of this year’s World’s Finest, our rules committee has been hard at work up until the last minute to create the fairest rules set for this culmination of everything about heroics!”
“You probably could have skipped a little more,” Andie noted with a snort.
Patty raised a finger. “First, the basics. This year’s nemesis finals will be a classic, one-on-one, single elimination event. Scoring remains as previously announced and is cumulative for each team member for each academy. Now, to add a bit of spice to this year’s event, this tournament will also be a blind brackets event!”
“Blind?” Aylin asked quizzically. “Shall you be forced to be blindfolded for this event? That would seem more comedic than interesting.”
“No, Aylin,” I answered, “I think it means… well, she’s about to explain, I think.”
Sure enough, Patty did so. “That means that while the bracket has been set, no one fighting knows who is battling who until they enter the arena! It will be the most thrilling event of all! The only thing we can assure you is that no teammates will be forced to fight in the first round. Hurrah!”
Matt and I both let out a sigh of relief at that.
“And for the boring stuff.” Patty sighed before she rattled off the rest in short order. “No killing, fights are to unconsciousness, submission, or helplessness, no time limits, competitors are allowed one piece of gear outside of their own powers, and no comm units.” She blinked slowly, then beamed into the camera. “And that’s it! Fight hard, heroes, because this is anyone’s competition to take! Good luck!”
Before Patty’s image blinked out from the monitors, Kara was already pulling out two of her tech boxes. “Right, one piece of gear each. I know just what we need.”
I didn’t interrupt her. I knew Kara would make the right choice for us, and as she passed her hands over the boxes, they began to warp and change. Metal shifted, wires sprouted and rerouted, and circuitry became etched on silicon boards. By the time she had finished her work, Matt had gotten out of his seat and leaned against our row of seats to watch expectantly.
“And done.” Kara pulled her hands back from the now-complete gear on her lap. One piece I recognized because she had been using it herself for most of the World’s Finest, the shield bracer derived from the study of my own powers, but even that was slightly modified with an additional emitter of some kind on the forearm facing forward. The second was technically two items, a pair of what looked to be high-tech greaves, with thruster ports clustered all around it. She held up the bracer first and handed it to me.
“So, as you can tell, this is the same force field emitter I’ve been using myself, so I know it works well,” she explained. “While it has its limits unlike your powers, Nick, it will help keep you going when you can’t use your abilities.”
As I examined it more closely, she reached over to tap the forward-facing port. “But you need some offensive punch too, so I modified it to include a force blaster setting, like my old shield you used when fighting Fulgurite. You can’t run the shield and blaster at the same time, but both will be far more powerful than that older model.”
I smiled as I pulled the bracer on. Micro-motors whirred inside it as the plates shifted to adjust perfectly to my forearm. “Thanks, Kara. Just wh
at the doctor ordered.”
She blushed a hint at that, then turned to Matt in the aisle. “Now, Matt, your problem is that your primary powers are in hand-to-hand combat, and there’s no guarantee there will be metal around for you to use Kristen’s powers on.”
“Uh, yeah,” Matt grumbled. “Couldn’t, you know, throw the metal at people.” There it was again, that flash of anxiety. Kristen had to have caught it too, but if she was worried about it, she was hiding it. When we got to the arena, I’d have to pin him down about that.
“So,” Kara continued, oblivious to the shift in tone, “this pair of omnidirectional thrusters will give you the mobility you need to get in anyone’s face.” She held up the leg guards. “As with Nick’s bracer, there is a series of motors and joints that will dynamically resize it to match your werewolfing, and not only will these let you fly for limited periods, they will adjust to boost jumps and pounces.”
As Matt took them to examine, Kara laughed sheepishly. “I’d give you my anti-grav cape for real flying, but I haven’t quite worked out how the power output equations to efficiently nullify mass as large as yours. Sorry.”
“Oh, no, nothing to be sorry about, Kara,” Matt said quickly before cracking a brief, toothy smile at her. “Thanks. These’ll help a lot.” He carefully slid the greaves into place, and just like my bracer, they whirred and shifted to wrap perfectly around Matt’s shins and calves.
“Great job, Kara,” Gemma enthused before taking a deep breath. “We’re as ready as we’re going to be.” She looked across the bus at everyone that wasn’t Matt or me. “I have tickets for everyone not in the tournament to sit in the stands, really nice seats near the Kai-lao Academy box. If you want to see Nick or Matt outside of the ring, you will have a free period between each round to mingle, but you’re forbidden to discuss the match bracket.” She raised a hand to cut off any protests. “You all know that this place has more security and cameras than the Alexandria Depository, so please, don’t bend or break the rules on this one.”
Eric made a motion of zipping his mouth shut. “You got it! Consider this mouth sealed!”
“If that mouth is so sealed,” Andie joked, “why are you still talking?”
We all got a little laugh about that, and the chatter broke down into small talk and conjecture as to who Matt and I might face in our first round. I joined in, of course, but I kept an eye on Matt the rest of the trip. Though he mostly acted like his usual grumpy self, that uncertainty was always there, and more than a few times, Kristen gave him that twin voodoo stare, but he didn’t really respond.
That was why, as I told myself, the moment we touched down in the arena and broke off from our friends to finish the last preparations for the nemesis round, I put a hand on Matt’s shoulder just as he opened his locker. In the old days, he would have spun around, spitting, growling, and trying to claw my face off, and he tried for at least a little of that bluster as he turned, but his heart wasn’t fully in it.
“What is it, Nick?” Matt growled. “If you’re going to ask me if I’m ready and shit again, the answer is fucking yes, okay?”
I took a step back and frowned a hair. “So, I’m giving that a six out of ten for effort, but you lose a lot of points for sincerity.” When he rolled his eyes at me, I only crossed my arms and frowned a bit more. “Matt, dude, there’s something wrong. I know it, I’m pretty sure Kristen knows it, and maybe no one else has seen it but… we’re about to be in our toughest fights yet, well, outside of Petey, and--”
“Yeah, yeah,” Matt interrupted as he flopped down on the bench by the lockers. “I know. We need to do well, or else we lose. Well, not lose but… we don’t beat both the big asshole teams. Don’t remind me.”
“Sure, and I know you didn’t ask for this role,” I said in a softer tone. Instead of staying looming over Matt as I now did, I took a seat next to him on the bench. “I know you don’t like the spotlight, especially after last semester, and you don’t want all this responsibility right now, but I also saw how you’ve been really stepping up over this entire competition… and I know how much you care about the team. I know you can do this.”
Matt looked about ready to bark some kind of rebuttal, but then he let out a huge sigh. “I… Nick, man… I have a confession.”
I blinked at that. “I’m no priest, but I am your friend. What is it?”
“I, uh, I can’t really use Kristen’s powers.” His tone was flat and defeatist, and I found myself stunned into silence for a moment. “I mean, I can feel them, I know I can access them, but… I’ve never been able to really use them. They…” A growl of frustration shook his body. “Fuck it, I’m just not smart enough to figure them out, and I’m not calm enough to focus enough to use them.”
I thought back long and hard, and I realized that I had never seen him use her magnetic manipulation abilities. Not in practice, not in a match, not in the World’s Finest, even though I always made sure to plan it so that they were in a position to do so. Kristen, well, I had seen her use Matt’s healing factor and even his bestial transformation plenty, but…
“That’s why you’re worried,” I said at last. “Because you don’t think your own powers will cut it when the chips are down.”
“Yeah.” Matt hunched forward, leaning his elbows on his knees. “So I’m just going to fuck this up for everyone, just like I let Brad into my head and fucked up everything last semester. Efraim will be super pissed, even more than he already is, and then I won’t even have a mentor.”
“Fuck that old vampire,” I said firmly. “You and Kristen don’t need him.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “Look, Matt, I know you think that you’re a failure right now, and I also know that, well, when you’re feeling bad about yourself, it’s hard to take what anyone says at face value.”
Matt shifted up straight and snapped his gaze over to face me, anger in his eyes. “And what the hell do you know about failure, Nick? You’re the goddamn golden boy, the guy who is not only a big hero to Alexandria but the heir to…” Realization sunk through the rage and into Matt’s eyes. “... the place that everyone hates.”
“Yeah, man.” I squeezed his shoulder. “I’ve been the guy everyone hated, that everyone said was going to turn into the world’s biggest threat, the guy people jumped on, and you know what? There were times I believed it, even up through last semester.” I gave him a smile as I clapped his back and pulled away. “If anyone knows how you feel, it’s me. Our parents kind of fucked us both over.”
Matt laughed a bit. “Guess you’re right.” He sighed. “Doesn’t change the fact that I’m still fighting with an arm tied behind my back.”
“Now this isn’t something I’m an expert at,” I admitted. “I don’t know how this power sharing works or feels or any of that, but I do know you, Matt. You won’t give up, not when your family is on the line, and we’re all your family now. You’ll figure it out.”
“Yeah,” he growled low, more talking to himself than me. “Family. Yeah, I can’t let you guys down.”
“So,” I said after a long moment, “are we going to win this thing for Valcav Academy?”
Matt looked over at me with a hint of uncertainty still in his eyes but with growing confidence in his fanged grin. “Nah, man. We’re going to win this for our family.”
26
Whatever else you want to call my father, you had to accept that he was a genius of the first order. How else could you explain the overnight transformation of the small cityscape that had filled the Imperial Colosseum into the much more confined space it was now?
As I stepped out of the entrance gate and onto the arena floor, I stared in awe at the new environment. Instead of a massive space nearly three-quarters of a mile long, the fighting area was now confined to maybe that of a football field, though circular rather than rectangular. The floor wasn’t pavement or sidewalk or anything, it had been replaced by what appeared at first blush to be some kind of thick tile of an even white color. Around the limits of t
he arena, walls covered in the same tile soared at least a hundred feet upward, and atop those walls was extensive rows of seats.
Unlike the Orion Arena, these weren’t bench seats or sectional seating, these were all posh, luxurious-looking leather recliners. Thousands upon thousands of people filled the stands, and many of the signs I had become familiar with during the rescue event in Alexandria were back. Though I could see where each academy’s team had their spots to cheer from, I didn’t see any of the faculty or Dad. They had to be up in the private boxes that ringed the arena near the ceiling, but they were so distant I couldn’t get a good look inside their wide windows.
That’s when I noticed that, despite the vast throng of cheering people above, it was almost dead silent. I squinted my eyes and scanned the room. There, at the lip of the wall, the air shimmered faintly. Force screen, almost certainly, no doubt to protect the onlookers from stray blasts or other violence. That also meant we were in an even more limited space than I thought. That was a plus for me during an unpowered fight but could limit me if I went all-out.
The silence was cut then by the soft swoosh of the opposite gate sliding open. The figure that stepped through, my first opponent, was silhouetted by blinding light, no doubt another dramatic flourish from my dad, the perpetual showman. I took in a deep breath and settled into a fighting stance, my shield bracer humming as it built up a charge.
The figure shifted into an elaborate-looking and very familiar ceremonial stance, and by the time the door had closed and they had dropped into something more pragmatic, I knew who I was facing.
White Lioness, her tail swishing behind her, curled her claws as she pressed her lips into a stoic smile. “Nicholas, hello again.”
I let out that deep breath and smiled back. “Hey, Lioness. Glad to start this thing off with a good, clean fight.”
Though I had seen what she could do and was impressed by her skill and resourcefulness, I also figured that this could be a fight I could win with just my training and Kara’s gear. I loosened my fingers and shifted to a light-footed stance. Her best bet was to use her animal shifting powers to go full feline and blitz me with speed, so I had to be ready to move. As I began to change my stance, so did she, staying low as if ready to pounce at a moment’s notice as she began to circle forward.