In the unchanging world of his underground lab, Lightforge spent his morning reflecting on the impressive resilience and adaptability of the human mind. It had been just two weeks since he and two of his friends had locked themselves into the lab for an extended training session. In that time, they’d already settled into a routine.
They spent the vast majority of their time relaxing or attending to their personal projects. Lightforge had an inexhaustible list of ideas and inventions to work on, while the others spent their time on whatever they wanted to work on.
Within limits, of course. Sunbird had gotten an earful over collapsing a section of ceiling in the first few days. There was little worry that she would hurt herself; the system had hard limits on environmental damage, after all. The real concern was that such destruction would draw attention to them before they were ready.
It was far from a perfect system. Every once in a while the confinement would drive one of them over the edge and they would have to step out and take a walk to cool down. Of course, the only reasonably safe place for them to do that was in the sewers. And while they were nicer than real world sewers, it still wasn’t a pleasant place to spend time unless you had to.
The thing that truly held their nerves together was the simple fact of the growth and experiences that they’d had since embarking on this mission. Once every three days, their spirits would be buoyed up by the excitement that could be had while completing missions. By design, each of those training sessions was completely different from the ones that came before.
----------------------------------------
Training Session #2
With three days of tinkering time, Lightforge had made a single attempt to tweak the powerful emitter. That effort hadn’t lasted long, as he’d been terrified that he would accidentally damage it. But the effort had been worth it. The next time he activated the device, he’d been presented with a new option. The ability to trade in duration in exchange for extended range.
Oddly, the transfer only went one way; they couldn’t extend the duration past the standard three hours.
The trio had discussed the new possibilities, and they’d decided to test the limits of the ability. The range of the power was extended from 200m all the way to 500m, at the cost of the duration being cut to just 20 minutes. That was not a lot of time.
Luckily, Sunbird knew the perfect mission to tackle in that timeframe. The bane of every gamer’s existence: an escort mission.
In concept, it was simple: an engineer needed some bodyguards while delivering a high tech device from one lab to another. It wasn’t even a particularly large distance to cover, and would readily fit inside their expanded area.
It was infamous as one of the least-completed missions in the entire game. The engineer was slow, reckless, and generally hopeless at keeping himself alive for more than thirty seconds. It also came just close enough to the start of the game that most players wouldn’t have a particularly large set of abilities or items to help improve the odds.
This particular mission also featured one the first superpowered villain NPCs. The corresponding spike in difficulty as a result made the whole thing such a slog that almost no one completed it. It was so bad that the devs had eventually given the mission a massive boost to the rewards that it gave out. It didn’t help as much as they’d hoped.
But it did mean that it was the perfect target for the trio. The only problem was the single biggest reason for the mission going incomplete for so many: it was way too long. It took the engineer exactly 24 minutes to walk to his final destination, assuming that he didn’t get scared and tried to hide.
That was too long for them, but Gray Guardian had a clever workaround for them.
The downside to the plan was that the engineer was screaming at the top of his lungs and desperately trying to run away and hide as he normally would when in danger. But this time the result was just him falling on his face and sliding across the slick surface of the barrier in front of him.
He wound up sprawled out beside Lightforge and Gray Guardian, who were significantly more calm about the whole situation. All three were inside a large sphere that glowed with swirls of white and blue energy. The colors moved frantically around them as they rolled through the streets.
They were able to stay still amid all the motion thanks to a small platform that stayed perfectly still at the bottom of the sphere. The platform was crafted from metal slats that had been put together in a rush. Either end featured small holes where the heroes had placed their hands. Pulsing energy flowed from both of them into sustaining the shield around them.
And Sunbird? She was flying behind the giant marble of death, occasionally blasting it with energy to keep it moving. It was a good way to vent her frustration from not getting to be inside the ball to experience the trip. Her friends had promised that she would get a turn soon enough, just not right now.
The poor villain, bane of low level players everywhere, was flattened underneath the powerful sphere of reinforced energy before anyone had truly realized that he was there. That day the group smashed the record for the fastest clear of that particular mission.
----------------------------------------
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
Training Session 4
Giant praying mantises. A nice, old-fashioned mad scientist had gone nuts with genetic experiments, and now they were loose on the streets. For most it would be enough to accidentally create an army of eight foot tall insects. But this guy? No, that wasn’t far enough, he had to go the extra mile.
Sunbird cackled with glee as one of her golden beams was intercepted by a pulsing red one that came from a cannon built onto the mantis’s back. The two beams danced and clashed against one another, throwing sparks up and down the street.
Both beams petered out and Sunbird dove backward through the air, narrowly avoiding a swipe from another mantis. That one had had its arms tipped with three foot blades. She flipped through the air and threw out her leg, catching the blade mantis in the head and sending it stumbling.
“Giant robot mantises!” she screamed, “This is awesome!”
Lightforge tumbled to the ground, barely managing to turn it into a rough roll. It was just enough to dodge the spray of fluorescent acid coming from his own opponent. The acrid liquid hissed and smoked as it hit the concrete beside him. It was also so powerful that it had already eaten through his shield.
Gray Guardian dove in, appearing at his side and throwing up their much more powerful barrier. More spraying acid arrived with bullets coming from the mantis that Gray had been avoiding.
Lightforge groaned and said, “I think I know why this mission is meant for teams of five. This is going to be rough. Why did we pick this one, again?”
“Because Sunbird didn’t get to ride in the giant ball.”
“She’s still upset about that?”
“She never got the chance last time, either.”
“There wasn’t time! And she made the schedule.”
“Woo! Eat my glowing fists, bug breath!”
Sunbird went screaming past, apparently bored with her long-range duel against the enemy in front of her. Instead she was charging right at the enemy, unleashing powerful bolts at point blank range. She was trying to punch with her powers, seemingly for the sheer enjoyment of the idea.
Reluctantly, Lightforge nodded toward her and said, “Well, at least she’s happy now. Maybe she’ll forget about the ball thing?”
“I doubt it. Why not just let her take a ride?”
“I will! I just don’t know when, given the limits we’ve put on ourselves.”
“Wow. I fully don’t care about her getting a joyride, but that’s just pathetic.”
“Look, can we talk about this after we kill the cyborg bugs?”
I don’t think we’ll have much choice in the matter. She won’t forget.”
“I know.”
Gray dropped several buffs on him and he leaped out of the protective field. His weapons buzzed with energy as he brought his hammer up to meet the acid spitting mantis. Its head snapped to the side, forcing it to spray one of its allies with its powerful acid.
The other mantis shrieked as the acid began to eat it away until it collapsed. Lightforge grinned at that; one down, and a whole bunch more to go.
----------------------------------------
“Training” Session 5
Sunbird was pouting. Well, it might be more accurate to say that she was building to throwing a fit, but for the moment it was just pouting. All three of them were sitting on the little force field emitter platform that Lightforge had built for their giant marble experiment more than a week before.
They were just sitting in the giant glowing marble in the middle of the street, completely motionless.
“What the hell!” Sunbird yelled, “This is so unfair!”
“I tried to tell you,” Lightforge said, “but you weren’t listening. With you inside, we don’t have any way to propel this thing. But now you’ve gotten to be inside, so can we go back to training?”
They were at the top of a hill, but there was nothing they could do to propel the force field while they were inside. The barrier blocked attacks in both directions and hitting it from the inside couldn’t make it move. And despite the shape, the barrier wouldn’t start moving on its own. It had been intentionally designed to have high friction with the ground so that the user could walk uphill without slipping and falling.
He wasn’t sure how they managed it, but Gray Guardian managed to roll their eyes at him from behind their mask. Technically, that’s not particularly impressive as the mask doesn’t stop them from controlling their eyes. The impressive part was that, even with the mask hiding their eyes he could feel them rolling.
The healer shook their head and said, “I can’t tell if you’re being mean or if you’re actually this dense. Either way, your lack of imagination in this case is stunning.”
They pulled a large sack out of their inventory and set it on the ground between them. They reached in and pulled out a grenade. Sunbird stirred from her sulking and stared at the bag full of explosives.
“Wow. Why do you have all those?”
“This is how I protect myself when you guys aren’t around.”
“Really? Do grenades do that much damage?”
“Not really, but I’ve found that few weapons make people run away quicker.”
“Nice.”
“Uhh,” Lightforge interrupted, “How do those help us? They would have to be outside to do anything.”
“I know.”
Gray Guardian pulled both hands from the platform and the sphere around them flickered blue for a moment before vanishing. The healer tossed the entire bag of grenades onto the street behind them, keeping just one in their hand. They turned to Lightforge.
“This thing can put the barrier up pretty fast, right?”
“Yeah… why?”
“Just wondering.”
They pulled the pin on the last grenade and lobbed it high into the air. They shoved their hands back to the platform’s controls and Lightforge cut off his protests, focusing instead on pouring energy into the device at their feet as quickly as possible.
The glowing barrier appeared and snapped shut just as the grenade fell back down and landed neatly on the bag of its fellows.
The blast rocked the street and sent them shooting away, crashing around like a giant pinball as they bounced off buildings and used a car like a ramp.
Sunbird had been floating in the middle of the sphere in anticipation, which was not a good place for her to be. Their start was so violent that she was slammed against a wall. That didn’t stop her from giggling as they shot around for the next few minutes.
Lightforge was white as a sheet and focused on staring down at his hands and keeping the force field empowered the entire time. If he was very lucky, that would be enough to keep him from throwing up like last time.
It was going to be a long three hours.