“START!”

I jumped at the unexpected loud noise. The other teams rushed off immediately, some wincing as they moved towards where we were told the Jacqs were. I turned back to my team, slightly panicky, as I knew the timer had now started, and anything other than action was time-wasting.

“Ok, I’ll find the Jacqs; you guys save them.” I summarised before moving towards the wrecked building. My team nodded in agreement.

“Ready to use the aura vision?” I thought at Edward.

Edward replied, focused but slightly sleepily, “I guess I’ll have to be, but stop a second. I want to try something.”

I followed his instructions and stopped; I was next to one of the crumpled buildings. My vision then became blurry, like a 3D movie without the glasses. Edward had effectively half-possessed me, causing both of us to see in normal vision and aura vision. I could spot the different instances of Jacq’s soul under the rubble in front of me and around the arena. It was slightly satisfying to see that some of the teams were wasting their effort.

“Huh, I wasn’t actually expecting that to– what?” Edward said out loud, making me jump as my mouth moved without me expecting it to. “Yeah, that’s weird; you do the taking.”

“Ok, ignoring that,” I started, mumbling, “Guys, there’s two under here!”

Alex and Matthew started moving the rubble near where I was pointing. I then moved closer to another set of soul fragments, which seemed easier to reach: “Oliver, Jacq here.”

There seemed to be some Jacqs who were trapped only in the buildings that were still standing and required only some things to move.

“Oh, my hero!” Jacq said as he spotted us. “Now get me to safety.”

I was just about to move a wooden beam before my body froze. “Careful, that’s a support beam. Move that, and the rest falls.” The advice was helpful but still slightly creepy. In response, I changed my plan and moved the parts around the beam, making sure that it was still stable enough by getting Oliver to hold it steady while making enough room to get Jacq through.

“Uh, it’s always funny when they make that mistake. Good job avoiding it, though,” Jacq said, sounding slightly disappointed that we avoided the gotcha as I got Oliver to look after them.

“We should probably check the Jacqs for injuries,” I said, as I suddenly remembered something my mum mentored about things like this, “and keep them distracted, as that would be something we need to account for in real life, to limit the number of Shades that the ‘villagers’ seeing their village in such a state might attract. We might get marked for things like that, as I’m sure that counts as technique.”

“Good point,” Oliver replied, “I’ll stay with the ones we save.”

As we left the building, we saw that Mathew and Alex had also saved theirs.

“Where next, boss?” Alex said when he spotted us giving a mock salute.

“Leave them with Oliver, and—” I looked around. A couple that I’d seen before had been saved, but the next biggest area of olive brown was under a building that looked like a prison. It also seemed to be the biggest area away from any of the other colours. “Over there, it looks like there’s four. Start near the middle.”

“Sure, thing boss, though we might need to speed up slightly, the Legends have already gotten five of them out while we have three.” Alex updated me, “What do you think, divide and conquer or focus on the big groups together?”

“I’d say our best bet is to focus on the bigger groups,” I looked over at Mathew, “Do you agree?”

He nodded in response, looking slightly frustrated that he wasn’t able to make his spells work without the verbal component. We then got to work quickly to rescue these Jacqs.

***

The rest of the test was similar as we uncovered different Jacqs and gave them to Oliver to look after. Only a couple of the other teams had a similar plan, though that could have been caused by them copying us or by that team member being the most out of commission due to the bad luck.

I did half lament not being able to use any speed, and though I was tempted, I didn’t try it. Edward warned me that even if I had access to it, my particular Legacy still might not have been a good idea, as there may be stray ruptured gas lines that we’d likely have the bad luck of running into with a stray spark.

We didn’t go completely bad luck-free, as when Mathew’s tongue healed. He immediately tried to reconnect the telepathy link, which, of course, lined up exactly with when I was working around another support beam. I jumped accidentally, knocking the beam and causing the area around it to start to collapse. This meant that Alex and I had to quickly try to hold up the ceiling as we tried to get Jacq out, as he looked at us judgingly.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“And I thought you’d accounted for support beams.”

The mental expletives caused Mathew to sheepishly say, “Sorry.” as he came to help.

The saving did go more smoothly with access to Mathew’s shield spell, which we used to add stability to the structures. Alex helped us avoid potential electrical dangers by moving the electronics away from the water.

The actual moving of rubble went far easier than I was expecting as I had apparently become stronger since I’d last checked. The added reinforcement of my muscles with aura caused a noticeable improvement in how much I could lift even without directly weaving into my arms and legs yet, which was certainly motivation to continue with the technique despite how exhausting it had been.

When Yin yelled, “Time!” We had managed to save around fifteen Jacqs, which seemed to be one of the higher amounts. The Legends annoyingly seemed to have saved the most despite our aura vision advantage; their legacies seemed to be better equipped for tasks like this.

The saved Jacqs disappeared as everyone appeared in front of Yin to be judged. His eyes dimmed as he reestablished his control over his Legacy.

“You’ll be glad to know I’ve stopped my bad luck now,” Yin started, “and you’ll also be glad to know we won’t leave you hanging too much in how you did.”

Dr Jacq reappeared next to him with a clipboard. “Right, team Legends saved me most and from my perspective, team Duck caused the least amount of extra damage.”

“That seems similar to my perspective,” Yin confirmed, “but I’d also like to mention that team Bright Sparks seemed to cause the least amount of damage per you they saved, plus they were one of four teams that looked after the Jacqs they saved which is a vital part of these rescue operations. They also seemed to be the most accurate in finding where they needed to dig to get you out, which contributed to how they were able to save as many of you as they did.”

“Nice, now with the negatives. As the timer ended, eight of me were still stuck. I’ll remind you that speed is certainly needed in these situations as trapped people panic, may need medical attention, or only have a limited amount of air. Also, at least one team unintentionally made the situation more dangerous for at least two of me while saving a different me.”

“Right,” Yin responded, “and the team Work Saw caused the most unnecessary damage, but I do have to take that fact with some leniency, as the power make up of Work Saw is less suited for recovery work, but even so, try to limit your structural damage in the future.”

The team standing to the right of us, who I assume were team Work Saw, looked guiltily to the ground. I could definitely see Yin’s point, as looking at the team, it seemed like the team’s powers seemed far more suited to combat and causing damage. The leader looked over two metres tall with hands that could change into boulders.

“All of you seemed to deal with the unexpected bad luck reasonably well, still being able to work effectively even with injuries that limited how you could use your weapons and powers, plus, of course, headaches and tiredness. While you certainly can improve in the future, you should be proud of where you are currently.” Yin concluded.

“You’ll receive more personalised notes later,” Jacq added at the end of Yin’s speech, “so you can be not as terrible in the future.”

***

As typical, after Jacq’s lesson, everyone dragged themselves to the cafeteria, limbs dead, the adrenaline wearing off. The only one of my team still unaffected as much was Alex, as usual, which felt unfair, but there wasn’t much that we could do about it.

Despite being the member of the team who was the second most robot, I did not benefit from this fact. Using the linked vision with Edward gave me a headache. It was like I’d watched a movie cross eyed for an hour, an experience I would not recommend. It may have helped my team, but I had suffered the consequences. I wouldn’t recommend it.

Mathew was staring at his tea as he didn’t want a repeat of the morning, “You know, I don’t think I appreciated not having a burnt mouth as much as I do now.” he took a tentative sip of his mug before putting it back down, “Accurate pronunciation of syllables was not something I’d taken any thought in really before today. Especially the vocal part of my spells, I know it’s possible to do without that aspect, but it was just so much easier with it that I think I got lazy. Plus I probably am over reliant on the spells.”

I smiled at him, “I thunder whath broughth thoths thoughths thon.”

He threw a roll at me, deservedly. Unfortunately for him, I just caught it and took a bite.

“I don’t think a team leader should make fun of his teammates.”

“It was an hour ago, so I can, and it’s funny.” Mathew rolled his eyes in response, but luckily for me, he didn’t roll me again. “But yeah, I get it; I feel I might have been starting to get over-reliant on my speed, but during the test, I was fine without it. Then again, it most likely wouldn’t have hurt.” I paused as I remembered Edwards’s warning, “Except maybe if Edward was right about the potential gas leaks, but I guess we’ll never know.”

“I’m of the opinion that, most of the time, you don’t need a Legacy,” Oliver added in.

Alex looked at him, “Of course you’d have that opinion.”

“Damn right, and I’d probably contradict myself as soon as mine unlocks.” He replied, “It’s getting to the point where I’m tempted to take Jacq up on his offer despite what people say.”

Edward chucked me out of my body as my vision changed perspective. I saw my eyes flip colours: “Don’t.” I was suddenly back in control.

“I mean, it can’t be that bad,” I said, immediately contradicting him, “and yes, Edward is boring his eyes into the back of my head as I say this; why do you ask?”

“I don’t think I’d be able to ask them directly, anyway,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, “They’re scary.” He then looked behind himself, “Huh, to be honest, I fully expected Jacq to appear behind me.”

“Yeah,” Alex agreed, “That does sound like something they’d do.”

“Anyway,” Mathew interrupted, “Tomorrow seems like a more lax day; we mostly just have history with Miss Howl.”

“It should be fun. History seems to be one of the less taxing lectures we have here,” I replied. “It’s mostly cool stories, kingdoms falling, and trying to learn how not to do that.”