> We detected some motion near the warp zone today, but whoever came in was scrambling their signals and we couldn’t get sufficient resolution to resolve any details. Your ship has a more robust sensor suite for that sort of task. Could you make anything out?

> --Radio transmission from Voices for Non-Citizens

“No! No, you don’t understand! Even if we only get one second every twelve days, this is amazing.”

Clint was practically shouting as we walked out of the Shop, apparently part of an informal debate amongst the crowd that had gathered outside.

“If you can see it coming. That’s going to be harder for you now.”

Clint frowned at the woman who’d spoken, reaching up to massage the bandage over his missing eye. “That’s my point. I saw the napalm shot coming and activated my heat resist. That protected my eye from the heat of the missile, but not the force. Eyes are fragile, and they got teeny-tiny parts that're easy to lose or totally destroy. Lots of parts of our bodies are fragile, and the enemies are just hitting harder and harder. Dodging and blocking are great, but you can do everything right and still need a Hail Mary sometimes. That’s what this is. It might keep me from losing my other eye. Or my life!”

“He’s right,” Carlos said. “I was this close to being out of the way of that first D-Rex. One second of invulnerability? I’d still have a leg! I wouldn’t be stuck in the middle of my combat group! I’d still be on the frontlines instead of stumping along like this!”

The young man waved an arm at his leg, where a crude socket and straps affixed a curving length of metal to replace his absent calf and foot.

It was styled after sports prosthetics and the best our smiths could make for him… but it was still pretty bad. Healing Touch had restored the rest of Carlos’s shattered femur, but his lower leg bones and kneecap were gone. This sort of prosthetic really wasn’t suitable for an injury like his, since it didn’t have any joints. He’d said he found the springiness a little helpful, but he still moved slowly and used a cane.

A man I didn’t know shouted a question from the back of the crowd. “Shouldn’t you have just taken Regeneration?”

“I did! It’s just… slow going. We’d hoped that once I re-formed a bit of bone, we could abracadabra the rest back into being with Healing Touch, but no dice. Maybe in a year or so I’ll have a leg again, but for now Regeneration just means I keep needing to have my prosthetic refitted.”

I know why the abilities work that way, I thought. It’s because this whole thing is as unfair as the jerks in charge can make it.

“Look,” Carlos continued. “I doubt a lot of you watched professional Legend Scramble play, but there was an item in that game that gave 2 seconds of invulnerability and that was it. You couldn’t even attack during that time. Originally it did a bunch of other stuff too, but devs kept making it weaker and more expensive. Why? The pros kept building it because the effect was priceless! Invulnerability is amazing! It’s not even invulnerability to an attack, it’s invulnerability for a whole second! You could take a meteor to the face and walk away, or body block a hail of bullets meant to take down your whole squad. If you can still move while you’re invulnerable-”

“You can’t,” George called out. “Arnav activated his already.”

“Already?!” Priya yelped. “It’s been less than three minutes.”

George grimaced. “Already. He tripped, then froze an inch from the ground with his face scrunched up.”

“It wasn’t Flight? He has that from a Ruler ability too…”

“Sorry ma’am, no,” Colonel Zwerinski said. “I was there to see it. Your son had the casing around him like people get when taken to Challenges. Scared the dickens out of me. For a second, I thought we were getting random unannounced Challenges-” the colonel paused to let the crowd’s mutual horror at the idea rumble into silence “-But fortunately not. Just suboptimal ability use.”

Priya frowned, frustrated.

I patted her on the back and offered her a sympathetic glance. “We can still stand in front of him, at least.”

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

“He didn’t lose anything he had this morning, I suppose,” Priya grumbled.

Carlos waved his free arm, calling people’s attention back to himself. “So you can’t attack while invulnerable. Honestly? Kind of a relief. I don’t want to die to some invulnerable sociopath. This is still huge. You can set off a big explosion from point-blank and pop into invulnerability to dodge the impact. You can lure a powerful enemy into attacking and force them to waste their time and strongest abilities on a target they can’t harm. If you’ve got too much momentum, you can hit the ability for a second and bleed it away before you hit a wall or hit ground.”

“We don’t know that yet, do we?” I asked. I hadn’t intended to speak up, but I hadn’t been able to help myself. I loved this kind of speculation. “Momentum might just be paused, rather than eliminated.”

Carlos paused. “Huh. I haven’t played a video game where it works that way, so I just assumed… You’re right. We’ll need to do testing…”

Colonel Zwerinski cleared his throat. “Ahem. Testing will need to be done. While I do encourage anyone who uses their invulnerability to share all they can about their experience, I don’t suggest independent experimentation. I’ve just received word from the Arsenal that they’ve located another D-Rex south of town, and are heading in with plans to mutate and engage. If they’re successful, perhaps testing can be left in their hands. I’ve shared details of the Ruler ability and they are interested. Highly interested.”

People started to disperse, but I cleared my throat. “Um… Excuse me… I’d rather everyone heard this from me than from somewhere else.”

The looks of confusion I got almost made me chicken out, but I took a deep breath. Always better to rip the bandage off quickly. “I’m pretty sure the mutated Titan was my fault. I said the words ‘too easy,’ and, since I’d beaten a Challenge, we got that thing dropped on us. I’m really sorry. The words were out of context. I definitely wasn’t saying the Titan was too easy, but that didn’t seem to matter.”

“Why do you think it was you? How’s the Challenge relevant?” Clint asked slowly.

“I got a really weird message. It said that I was eligible and had made a complaint, and now it was ‘intensifying.’ Plus, well, look at my bracelet. It’s dimmer than George’s or Priya’s.” I held up my arm to demonstrate. “That happened at the same time.”

Clint’s remaining eye narrowed. “Hm.” Rather than comment, he turned and walked away. I didn’t see Doreen, the groupmate who’d had her ear burned off, but at least the information was out there. I wasn’t keeping it a secret. If she held it against me… If Clint did…

Well, hopefully any bad feelings toward me wouldn’t extend to Micah. I knew my oldest got along well with the smith.

Some people explicitly came up to me and told me they didn’t blame me in the slightest. Others seemed more uncertain, holding their silence or shooting me suspicious glares… but even so, I felt much better. If people decided to hold it against me? Oh well. There wasn’t any more I could do.

Information continued to trickle in throughout the evening as the Arsenal fought Titan after Titan. Apparently, there was a big range in what you could say to trigger the “intensification." Just saying it was easy wasn't enough, but anything that implied that it was excessively easy or that a Challenger wanted more danger or a stronger foe worked. In addition, they'd discovered that there were at least three versions of the souped-up monster. The Arsenal had fought one more like ours, two heavily-armored behemoths that were somehow also faster than the base version, plus one that emitted poison clouds over a large area and could camouflage itself within them.

Doreen and Clint ended up leaving our combat group. Doreen, I heard about from a third party. Clint had the courtesy to come up to me himself.

“There’s no hard feelings. I just…” The big man paused, uncertain. He moved his hands around, as if he might be able to physically shape the words he couldn’t vocally form.

I shook my head. “It’s okay. You don’t have to justify anything. If being in my group would distract you, you should find a new one. We all need to focus in the field.”

Clint’s shoulders drooped. “It’s just one of those things. I don’t blame you, but…”

“But you kind of do?” I managed a small smile, trying to take the sting from my words.

“Well…” Clint looked embarrassed, one hand lifting to rub the back of his neck.

“No, please! It’s fine. I blame me, too.” I hesitated. “Should I see about finding Micah another forging partner?”

Clint looked startled. “What? No! Aw, hell no. Love working with him. You know that. Kid’s too smart for his own good sometimes, but he’s got a great eye for detail, he’s a good listener, and he and I are a team now! Barely have to say two words and he brings just the right heat in just the right place.”

I felt myself relax. “Oh, good. He’s already furious with me. I was dreading the prospect of breaking it to him if you said yes.”

“Nah. Not a chance. Not even if you were a hundred percent at fault. Boys his age need good men to learn from, and I’m honored he trusts me to be one of them.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I meant it, but I felt my smile grow brittle as Clint turned to go.