by Vic Connor
Alonso brought his fist back, readying a flying punch to close the gap. At the same time, the gauntlet glowed. Could Alonso use all three abilities at once?
“Hunk!” Cal called over the comm. Niko saw her backing toward him, firing her crossbow at Jacob as she did. Jacob blocked them with a summoned shield of light.
“On it!” Hunk replied, running closer, edging around the outside.
Tim was watching, yelling something into his comm, but the enchantment ensured that Niko couldn’t hear it. Alonso flew at Niko, fist crashing and expending its burst of energy in the same moment. Niko put an arm up as if that could block it.
As it turned out, he didn’t have to. Hunk threw a bubble at the last moment, blocking every one of Alonso’s attacks.
A few feet away, Cal took a break from unloading shots at Jacob to nod at Niko. “Tsk tsk, Allie,” she said. “Trading three cooldowns for one? As a dueler, you’ve got to know that’s bad math.”
Niko had only a moment to wonder why Cal was taunting him. Alonso roared, and empty of cooldowns, he and Niko got into a good, old-fashioned fist-fight.
And by God, for those scant seconds, there was nothing else. No Hunt, no Territoria, no prison sentence or dead parents or memories, just his knuckles crashing against someone he hated. They struck one another in the rhythm of feet running. Niko was angry, and nothing mattered except that.
Cal’s voice broke the spell. “Niko. Focus. I need your help with Jacob.”
Niko’s instincts were replaced with a flood of logical intricacies. Cal was a few feet away, shooting at Jacob. Tim was howling into his comm, trying to defend Jacob and make an opening for Erica to jump Hunk. Jeny was protecting him. Hunk had popped his Ult just to keep Niko up through the fight, and he was still healing him. Niko started blocking the hits he had taken before, trying to maneuver his exit. Alonso didn’t relent. His gauntlet started to crackle with energy.
“I can’t get away from him,” Niko yelled as he blocked an especially hard hit.
“Jen?” Cal said. “We need you.”
In a flash, Jeny’s tusk-shield slammed down between him and Alonso. Niko darted away, barreling towards Jacob. Jeny kept her shield up, blocking Alonso from chasing after him, as Erica and Tim tore into her. Her health ping-ponged as Hunk healed the constant damage she was taking. As Niko passed Cal, he used EditValue to increase her attack power. He was almost in punching range of Jacob when Tim put himself bodily between them.
Tim lifted his hammer. “Not happeni—” He was cut off when Jeny charged directly into him, her sealskin head butting him out of the way as her shield kept Alonso back. She turned to Niko and glared. “Go!”
With a start, Niko rushed past her, running to the now unprotected Jacob. The guy looked haggard, hunched, bloodied, his hood hanging low over his eyes. Niko used RecursiveFunction, unleashing a hail of punches on him. With a gasp, Jacob dropped to his knees, and a countdown appeared over his head.
The announcer’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker. “DOWN!” The same speakers ticked every second that counted down.
“Jeny,” Cal called, “don’t let them revive.”
“Aye, Capt’n,” Jeny reported. She and her massive seal-beast moved as one, crashing in front of Jacob’s prone form, tusks floating and ready to impale any member of Black Fire trying to revive him. Tim and Alonso unleashed a volley of damage at her from both sides; Jeny made her tusks into armor, mitigating but not completely blocking their damage.
“Cal,” Hunk cried over the mic. “I can’t keep her up much longer.”
Niko peered at Hunk’s HP, which was full, but his mana bar was draining fast. Hunk had used it all keeping him up during his fistfight with Alonso, and then to keep Erica and Tim from knocking out Jeny when she’d sent her shield to Niko to help him get away. For a moment, it felt like someone was drilling a screw into his sternum; a twisty, complicated feeling Niko had no time to process, so it processed as anger. He looked back at Hunk, opening his mouth to yell at him for letting his mana get so low, for letting this happen.
Leathery wings and horns curved in the shape of a heart crept up behind him. Hunk was wholly focused on Jeny, who was focused on guarding the scant last seconds of Jacob’s K.O. timer. Even if she did see it, there was a full-on team fight between her and Hunk.
Niko watched Cal, waiting for her to notice it, but she didn’t seem to. Her eyes were alight with a burning fire, glowing, and she was firing bolts into Tim’s stone armor. Niko’s first ability would be off cooldown in two seconds. The cooldown flipped over, and the screw in his chest turned. “Hunk’s in trouble,” he said. “I’m going.”
“Niko, stay—” Cal warned, just as Jeny cried out, “Don’ you dare—!” as Niko snapped across the field to the shrinking space between Hunk and Erica. The announcer crowed Jacob’s knockout as Erica brought her claws down. Niko shouldered the damage meant for Hunk.
“You grea’ moron,” Jeny roared as Cal transformed into an owl, flying up over the fight. Jeny punched and shielded her way through Tim and Alonso to get to them, just as Niko started to feel…dizzy. He stumbled, stunned and warm, filled with a burning admiration for Erica despite her earlier betrayal. She couldn’t have done that to him, she couldn’t have! She was in love with him, and oh, what a wonderful feeling! So wonderful, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe...
The feeling passed after a few seconds, and he came out of it as Jeny’s beast thundered past him. She was a moment too late. Hunk dropped to the ground, the announcer crowing “DOWN” as the K.O. countdown started. It was almost expected, because Jeny leapt over him, barreling into Erica and throwing brawler punches that were mirrored by her massive beast’s gorilla-like arms. There was a half-shield up to block the rest of the Black Fire, but two of Jeny’s tusks protruded from Erica’s shoulders.
“She’s going to Ult out,” Cal called over the comm. Just as she said it, Erica’s wings expanded behind her, her horns and nails glowing a pinkish-red. Jeny made a fist, and the two spikes in Erica’s body snapped out with a wet crack. Small text floated up from Erica’s dazed expression. “Stunned.” Her wings folded, her horns and nails going dark again. An instant later, she snapped out of it.
“You!” Erica roared with rage, then the two went at each other, bloodied and angry.
“What just happened?” Niko asked.
“Jeny’s tusks stun when she recalls them… stuns can interrupt any ability if you time it right… even an Ultimate,” Cal said, panting into her mic. “She won’t be able to use it again…for another minute.”
It only took a few more angry swipes for Erica to take Jeny’s health down to ten. The announcer called “DOWN!”
“Who should I try to revive, Cal?” Niko commed desperately.
“No one,” Cal said. Her voice sounded different, like a harsh whisper. “We’re on cleanup. Take down Erica.”
Niko couldn’t see the health bars of an enemy, but Erica looked pretty bloodied. She simpered at him, curving her pretty figure, cooing for sympathy. Niko punched her in the shoulder, resisting the urge to do it somewhere meaner. The announcer barked “DOWN” as Erica fell to the ground, the K.O. timer popping above her head.
The brief moment of respite gave Niko room to wonder where the rest of Black Fire been this whole time. He turned to find a massive cloud of black sand, swirling around Tim and Alonso. Niko could barely make out their silhouettes inside, bumping into one another, arms out, trying to feel their way through. And there, afloat in the center, arms outstretched and eyes aglow with fire, soared Cal.
The instant he saw it, the storm subsided, and Cal landed on her feet, reloading her crossbow as Alonso and Tim got their bearings. “Two vs. two, comrade,” she commed. “Get in here and let’s finish it.”
“KNOCKOUT,” the announcer called. Hunk. Niko could still get to Jeny, tag her back in, give them a numbers advantage. Tim and Alonso descended on Cal, who backed away, looking between them. Her health wasn’t low, but it wasn’t
full either. His own was about the same, gutted by the hit he’d taken for Hunk. It took, what…five seconds to bring someone back? Would Cal last that long?
With a growl of frustration, Niko snapped forward, aiming to appear at a spot next to Alonso. He managed just that, and slammed Alonso in the arm. “Hey, Last Pick.” It wasn’t strictly true, but he hoped it would piss Alonso off enough to pull his attention from Cal.
It was. Alonso’s eyes locked on Niko, and he wound up a punch, charging too fast for Niko to dodge. The hit slugged into his chest, knocking him off his feet. Niko tried to throw a few valiant Recursive punches, but his EditValue was still on cooldown, and he couldn’t escape the assault. Without Hunk there to keep him up, the fistfight became much more one-sided. Alonso easily chipped Niko’s health down to 10. The announcer boomed “DOWN,” but Alonso kept on hitting him, crashing his health down further than Niko thought it could go, snarling curses between his teeth. Niko was used to curses, so they didn’t hurt, but he wouldn’t repeat them. If his health dropped low enough, would he log out? Wake up in the Vat, Clark’s foul breath in his face?
A pair of fiery eyes appeared above Alonso’s head, blurry in Niko’s punch-drunk vision. Crossbow bolts sprouted from Alonso’s chest. His HP went down in fat chunks of red, taking bites out of his health bar. Like a skittering ghost, an eerie cloud of sand darted over. Cal formed out of the shape, eyes blazing as she buried her dagger in his back. Alonso cursed, spat blood, then fell on top of Niko’s knocked-out body.
The weight made Niko wheeze with pain. It felt weird, being below the K.O. threshold. It felt like something was being scooped out of him, y’know, like digging a hole. His vision went completely blurry. He thought Cal was nearby, but sight had become a vague and inconsequential thing, and he couldn’t tell for sure. His own counter ticked down to 0 and he teleported out of the game.
Niko assumed he’d go into the barracks, but instead he popped into a small room, onto a table. Someone else loomed there, who with a sweep of their arm weaved a golden circle around the table, like it was a wave to greet him with.
Niko’s vision cleared somewhat. The guy had long hair and was dressed sort of like a cowboy. “This new kid,” he grumbled in a gruff voice. “He’s trouble, Mr. Okonjo, I’m a-tellin’ you. We should’a never accepted him here. He’s gonna get someone killed.”
That’s when Niko realized there were two people in the room—the gruff cowboy healer, and the tall, stately Headmaster, wearing a gunmetal-blue suit. The second person scrutinized Niko with…familiar eyes. “What’s his health at, Dr. Goseyun?”
“Low enough that I need to stabilize him,” the teacher, Dr. Goseyun, said, grabbing a potion bottle from a shelf and pinching Niko’s lips open, pouring it into his mouth.
“Wait—” Okonjo began, but Goseyun looked up at him, incredulous, continuing to pour the slippery, grey liquid down Niko’s throat. Niko’s health bar expanded backward, backsliding to grow bigger.
“What, exactly, should I wait for?” Goseyun demanded, waving his hand over Niko’s body, gems of stardust sprinkling down over him, making his HP tick up in a steady stream. “Do you want this kid to die?”
Okonjo turned his eyes down at Niko again, pursed his lips, and said nothing. Niko’s health hit full. Goseyun sighed, then reached under the table and flipped a clunking switch. The room shimmered out of view, and Niko reappeared in the barracks, laid out on the floor.
Jeny and Hunk turned from the screen, and then she was on him, picking him up off the floor by the jacket collar. “Whae’ on the two worlds did you think you were doing? Ya don’t take hits, level two, I do. Your job is to listen to Cal, throw a few punches, and otherwise you stay out of our way, understand?”
The haze of it all started to clear. They’d lost… They’d come so close and lost, and now Jeny was in his face, screaming at him.
“Then you should have done that job instead of leaving Hunk to get filleted by Erica,” he snarled back.
“Cal dinnae order me to. He was out of mana, their healer was down too, it was the team fight. He couldn’t help us anymore. But no, instead you ran off on yer own and took a hit no one could heal, and Hunk went down anyway.”
“So you just leave him to die?” The words were out of Niko before he thought about them.
It was like he’d electrocuted her—startled, her eyes bulging from her head. “He didn’t die, he… What are you on about?”
They locked eyes for a few moments, and all Niko wanted was to explain to her was how wrong this all was. The pain is real, he thought over and over, as if he thought it hard enough Jeny would hear him. It’s all too real. He didn’t want her to take that pain either, he realized, despite what he’d said.
“Jeny, come on.” Hunk put a thick arm around her, pulling her back. She calmed just an inch. “Niko, are you all right? It looked like Alonso put you into the negatives. When you disappeared and didn’t show up here right away, we got really worried.”
“I’m okay,” Niko said, shrugging off Jeny’s grip on his collar. We were worried. Maybe Hunk made it plural just to be nice. “I went to… I teleported to this little room,” Niko said. “Some guy was there, Dr.…Gozer or something? He gave me some weird potion.”
“Dr. Goseyun? He’s the support teacher.” Hunk’s small mouth gaped open. “He had to stabilize you? That’s so scary! Thank goodness it took.”
Jeny spat on the floor, though it was mostly air. “That Alonso kid’s a bloody weapon, he is.”
“You were watching?” Niko asked.
“Of course,” Hunk said. He pointed to the screen. Kiele’s scratchy voice was giving a play-by-play of the final moments.
“Cal and Tim are still dueling,” Jeny said. “Cal’s holding on, but if she takes one more hit, she’s gone.”
On the screen, from the overhead view, Cal dodged Tim’s stone hammer, getting behind him to bury her dagger in his shoulder. It ate a chunk of his health, but he had a lot of it. Hunk and Jeny both winced as Tim Ulted, stamping his feet and knocking Cal in the air before she could get away. Then, he swiped his hammer across her midsection. The small sliver of health she had left dissipated, and she fell. The game’s automated announcer crowed “GAME,” the letters appearing on the screen. The camera cut to Kiele and Luis, who declared Black Fire the winners. Niko and Jeny both roared at the screen, throwing up their hands. Meanwhile, Niko’s UI exploded with text.
QUEST COMPLETE: FIRST HUNT
600 EXPERIENCE GAINED
3 KNOCKOUTS: +900 XP
WIN BONUS: 0%
PASSIVE EFFECT: 1500*1.5 = 2250 XP
2350/4500 XP
Cal shimmered into the room, health full again. She shrugged, dusting her hands, as if washing the loss away. “Guess Tim got his rematch after all.” She didn’t seem upset at all.
Niko couldn’t understand it. How could you not hate losing to that prick Alonso, or that faker Erica, or detached Tim, or smirking Jacob? How could she not hate them?
Jeny started in on Cal right away. “Tell your little protégé not to fly off and do whatever he pleases in a fight.”
“Relax, Jeny,” Cal said. “It was Niko’s first Hunt, people make mistakes. Besides, I’d rather have a DPS who takes hits for our healer than one who tunnel-visions on kills. If anything, it proved I made the right call.”
Jeny turned purple as a bruise, the veins on the back of her tight fists bulging out, her cheeks blowing up like she was a kettle about to scream. She made an angry sound, then stomped out of the room, shooting a glare at Niko as she did.
Her rage hooked into him and stuck there, barbed and infuriating. “What is her problem?”
Cal raised her brows at him. The tiny motion was a silent censure. It seemed to ask, you done? That pissed Niko off even more.
Hunk stepped in. “She’s just really protective,” he said. “She always wants to be the first down, otherwise she feels like she isn’t doing her job. She actually…used to make the same mistake a lot.�
�
“We’ll do an after-action review later,” Cal said, walking to the door, then opening it for him and Hunk. “It’s time for the handshake.”
Niko frowned. “The handshake?”
“Mmhm. Sportsmanship, comrade. We have to congratulate the winners.”
“No way.”
Down the hall, through the open door, came familiar voices arguing. Erica, Jacob, Tim, and loudest of all Alonso. “If you’d done your jobs, we would have wiped the floor with them.”
“We?” Erica snarled. “If you’d listened to Tim’s calls instead of gunning for Niko, they wouldn’t have taken out Jacob and the fight would have been over in half the time.”
“Why are they arguing? They won,” Niko said, bewildered and annoyed.
“It was too close,” Cal whispered. “They expected to run us over and didn’t.” She shot him a smile, then strutted over to Tim, thrusting her hand out. “Good game,” she said.
Tim studied her hand with dull eyes, then smiled, chagrined, and shook it. “Yeah. Good game, Cal.” The two seemed almost friendly. Hunk and Jacob, too, shook hands amiably.
“Whatever. It was easy,” Alonso puffed, folding his arms.
“Yeah, totally,” Erica added, her hands staying decidedly on her hips.
Cal turned her cool smile on Alonso. “Sorry to make it so easy for you, then. Hey, Niko… You leveled up during that match, right?”
Niko looked around at the five sets of newly-furrowed brows aimed at him. “Uh…yeah?”
“Whoa, really? You hit level three already?” Hunk was wide-eyed. “You were only at one when the year started. How are you leveling up so fast?”
“BS he was level one; no one starts junior year at one,” Alonso snapped. “And there’s no way you leveled this fast either. It takes people all of freshman year to hit six.”
Cal shrugged. “It’s a mystery, but I’m guessing it has something to do with that new Mythic of his. Here’s hoping the Hunts stay easy, huh?” Cal nodded to the barrack’s exit, and Hunk and Niko followed her out.