"What the fuck are you doing there? The hell you think this is some kind of summer school? What is your name, son!"

"... Voke, sir!"

Instructor Zephyr had already found a new target. With that ghostly speed he flitted over to the handsome but slight Voke, whom Betelgeuse had just moments ago witnessed whispering to a nubile redhead.

The same Voke who had been behind him in the lift. The edge of his Incunabulum had been sharp indeed.

"Voke? That sounds like coke! Drugs are bad for you, Voke. Well, are you feeling romantical?"

"N-no sir!"

"So why is Ms. Nympho here talking to you then? Could it really be that your cock is made of coke, Coke Cock?"

"I… I don't know sir!"

"And you!" Instructor Zephyr roared, turning his attention to the redhead, who by now was shaking violently. "Dearie me! Trembling in anticipation! Are you a nympho, dearest? Are you a little roast beef bitch?"

"N-no sir!" she squeaked, her voice catching on a stutter.

"Coke Cock, you're next! Incelman, get over here and show Coke Cock what you're made of!" Instructor Zephyr hollered, summoning another one of the poor sods he had minted in his own inimitable way.

"As for you, Roast Beef, since you're so excited you'll be going right after. Best prepare yourself well, dearest!"

The second combat between Michael 'the incel' and 'Coke Cock' Voke began in earnest. It took three exchanges for Betelgeuse to guess that Michael's Increment had something to do with aggression and Voke's had something to do with avoidance.

'There is a method to the madness. Fights would never start if both combatants were avoidant and might become too bloody if both were aggressive. A minimum balance must be struck, it appears, when attempting to catalyze Etchings. He has been reading our personalities from the start,' Betelgeuse thought. A modicum of respect for the Instructor's observational prowess arose in his heart.

But were these their real personalities, or artificial ones created by the Incunabula? Where did individual personality end and artificial personality begin?

My own personality is likely to have changed drastically.

He sighed inwardly.

By the time the fourth exchange had begun, both combatants were hyperventilating. A cut on Voke's forehead spilled oodles of blood into his left eye, forcing it close.

Michael raised pallid fists to his chin, his exhaustion evidenced by the fact that his boxing guard failed to block his sunken cheeks from Betelgeuse' vision.

"Psst!"

Chin to starboard. Betelgeuse raised an eyebrow at the redhead who had come slinking through the crowd of cadets.

Roast Beef, clutching at her Incunabulum, its cover mud-brown like his.

"Howdy there… um… name's Norma," she whispered again.

Betelgeuse returned to the match, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. Norma wasn't learning from experience.

It did appear, however, that the match had absorbed every ounce of Zephyr's attention. Betelgeuse wondered if the explanatory clause in Zephyr's Increment might not refer to a fascination with violence.

Voke feinted a strike at Michael's midriff; Michael took the bait, dropping his guard as Voke slammed his palm into Michael's temple with a resounding thwack, sending the latter stumbling ten paces to his right. Pitching precariously on a single foot, Michael barely avoided losing his balance.

An effective hit! Betelgeuse took note of the wince which momentarily flashed across Voke's features.

What was that about? It doesn't look like he hit Michael hard enough to hurt himself, and it was a palm strike besides…

"I wanted to know if you could help me with something," she prodded, undeterred by his apathy.

"What is it?" Betelgeuse returned softly, not deigning to shift his attention.

"It's my Increment. I was talking to Voke about it."

"I saw. Roast Beef," Betelgeuse said, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. She blushed a dark shade of red, little nose twitching irritably.

"... ahem… well, Instructor Zephyr does have good naming sense, Dog's Balls."

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"Har-de-har. What's this about your Increment then?"

"It's just, I don't quite know what to do with it."

"... I don't see how I can help, unless you show it to me—"

"Yeah, sure, here."

She proffered the open page of her Incunabulum to Betelgeuse.

> Owing to a broad curiosity respecting different aspects of culture, Norma Myrmec is able to connect closely with others.

Betelgeuse stared askance at her.

"You're just going around showing people that?"

"Just showed it to Voke. You're the second one. You got a real name anyhow?"

To show her Increment to an absolute stranger—interesting indeed!

"You must know that that's hardly safe."

"Pshaw! It's my business. They'll probably make us reveal it sooner or later anyway, put it in the system or something. So what, Dog Balls. Help?"

"It's Betelgeuse. Okay, I've seen it. Put it back before Zephyr comes to fuck us up."

Norma fumbled with her pouch and attempted heroically to ease the velcro flap open as quietly as she could. All she managed to achieve was to drag out the jarring pop-pop-pop as loop parted from hook.

The match between Michael and Voke had reached a standstill. Instructor Zephyr's obsessive attention had not appeared to wane.

Betelgeuse went over the basics in his mind.

His first impression was that there wasn't anything combat-useful in Norma's Increment. Not directly. The fault did not lie with her: Increments were a sublimation of the first eighteen years of one's life, and the fault could only be as large as one's control over the shaping of consciousness from birth. The old adage which saw the sins of the parent visited upon the child bore a grain of truth after all.

The environment shaped the raw material supplied by genetics.

Betelgeuse experienced a sudden flash of insight: by the time a person, fully-formed, came to the Democratic altar, rarely could she help the artifacts of her subconscious, and it was only with great difficulty that she could suppress thoughts bubbling unbidden to the surface of the mind.

Even the trained will is limited.

Which left the Etchings. Despite the many hours of (admittedly profit-focused) self-study Betelgeuse had dedicated to it, he could not say with certainty that he understood the discourse, given that the literature was mostly couched in jargon and academic parochialism. That level of technicality could only be fully unlocked by a Polyteknik education, supposed Betelgeuse.

Not that he would have opportunity to pursue anything in that direction for the foreseeable future.

"Seems to me that there isn't much you can do, in terms of combat," Betelgeuse began.

Norma's brown pupils dulled in disappointment. Her small pink lips set into a rigid line.

"… which is not to say there's nothing you can do. It seems to me that there's space to interpret this as an intelligence-type. I'm talking about the power clause saying 'connect closely with others'. And I'd point out that 'others' doesn't seem limited to human beings either, if the word 'culture' in the explanatory clause can be extended to…" Betelgeuse trailed off, grasping about for an appropriate category as Norma inched closer and stared into his eyes expectantly.

"… animals, maybe? The possibilities are quite broad."

Intelligence-type abilities which supported spying and information-gathering were amongst the most prized by the Big Six corporations, for obvious (read: corporate) reasons. Vulgar knowledge had it that Silver Incunabula holders, the bulk of which had intelligence-type Increments, numbered amongst the most highly paid individuals in the Democracy.

Despite this, an Ash grade could not aspire to any more than minor or trivial intelligence-type skills. Regardless of Etching, Ash grades were bound by the narrow scope of their Increments which, in the lay understanding, were generally restricted to personality changes.

"You're saying the best I can hope for is an Etching that will interpret my ability to connect closely with others as an intelligence-type. But I don't even know where to start!"

"Nothing to do with hope. Etchings are a sublimation of complex processes of subconscious development, reflection–"

"Ugh, yes, 'meditation, intellection, applied learning' etcetera etcetera. Let's not go into that, please," Norma interpolated. " I just can't visualize exactly how all this is going to go down. What exactly am I supposed to be reaching toward? I get that I need to want it hard enough to manifest, but the issue is that I don't even know what it is!"

"Please keep your voice down. Look, the simple fact is that we're Ash grades with limited options. Way I see it, I'd place emphasis on 'connect' and try to intuit some connection with your opponent. Try to empathize. Try to predict the next hit. Maybe try to assume some conclusions about the opponent, based on her physiognomy, skin color, body type. It's parsing concentrated discrimination into practical sense. That's the best way I can describe what I'm thinking, but it's not something easily put into words—it's meant to be slippery."

Norma sighed. Her red hair seemed to droop lifelessly.

"In any case, we'll probably know the results soon: considering the stress Zephyr intends to put us through, it is likely our first Etching will manifest over the next few days," Betelgeuse finished.

"... You're an Edomite aren't you?"

"What, it's written on my face?"

"I know someone who shifted over to Agni, a White with hair so long she could wrap herself in it to keep warm through winter. She was my neighbor. The same sort of pedant, as I recall. She also had a habit of standing out in the rain to do taichi."

'It's not tàijíquán. It's the Edom-ursi stance,' Betelguese thought to himself, chortling silently.

She seemed to have accepted Betelgeuse' assessment of the situation. He shot a surreptitious glance at Norma, running his eyes up and down her body, noting that she was lithe and muscled. If she succeeded in manifesting an Etching which allowed her to intuit opponent attacks, she could combine that with her physical fitness to great effect. Amongst other things.

"Look sharp. They're done," Betelgeuse indicated. Michael, the sides of his cheek bruised dark purple, had finally managed to catch the slippery Voke in a clumsy ankle lock. Voke, his forehead wound spitting blood incessantly, had started screaming wildly and tweaking out in fear, when Instructor Zephyr called an end to the match.

"So there's a chance you won't need to kill your opponent," Betelgeuse commented.

"I'm the one in danger here," Norma sighed again. "I sure hope she doesn't aim for the face."