Drowning, drowning! His lungs gasped for air, face smothered in heavy water. He was being dragged into hell, into the deepest depths of the ocean, the pressure crushing his body from all directions. His hands clawed at his face, trying to find even the slightest gap from which to breathe. In his agony, he shot awake with a start, gulping down sweet, sweet oxygen. Then his mind cleared, and he saw the rays of dawn filtering in through his window, painting a soft yellow over the wood floorboards, the sheets, and Nova, collapsed on top of him.

“Oh my god, Nova, you almost killed me!”

She was laying on him in some imitation of sleep, not too dissimilar to a pancake. Nova was almost the thinness of a blanket, draped over Marc and the bed like a discarded cloth. When he awoke, she pulled herself together, gel congealing into her more compact form. In about 30 seconds, she was shaped like a human woman again. In lieu of an apology or explanation, she mumbled something incoherent.

“Mnnn think in lots…”

“Ugh, okay, whatever. Ooh, a notification!”

His Metawatch lit up with a new urgent message, which he opened immediately.

[CONGRATULATIONS! You have been selected for further testing in our recruiting process! Report to Catgirls Inc. HQ today for your interview!]

So easy. He knew he’d get in all along. Empowerments really do run the world. Oh, but he didn’t have any fitting clothing for the occasion. Nothing a quick online purchase couldn’t fix. What to wear, though?

The woman at the desk held the oddly shaped corded phone to her ears. Being a catgirl meant needing specially made tools for some aspects of daily life normal people wouldn’t think twice about. There was probably some kind of moral conundrum with her being genetically modified to fulfill this position, her appearance scientifically designed with being as appealing as possible to most people.

When Marc walked through the door, she immediately scanned him with her identity verifier: a comically cartoonish raygun with a slit from which beams were outputted. A pull request to the database returned his information, location of interview, and notes on possible assignments. She took a deep breath, putting on the most corporately cute and amicable voice.

“Welcome, applicant! Please step into the teleporter here and you’ll be sent directly to the interview room. Do you have everything you need present and ready?”

Nova carried her shotgun like a bomb about to go off. Which in some respects it was, especially in her hands. Marc traipsed through the door proudly, garbed in the clunky ballistic vest he’d purchased, a garish rectangular box strapped to his left arm, a hardlight projector securely wrapped around his right.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m fully prepared.”

“Understood. Connecting to teleportation beacon…”

He pulled Nova by the hand into the metallic tube, all manner of lights and panels glowing in tune with the pulsing electronic heartbeat of the device.

“Please keep all arms and legs inside the capsule. Have a nice teleportation!”

It wasn’t a very large machine, so Marc had to hug Nova really close to ensure nothing got left behind. A few seconds passed in brief. He began to wonder when it would happen. Then; zap! They vanished without a trace. Curiously, the receptionist checked the database again, searching for all applicants due to arrive this day.

“Hm. HR is going to have a field day with a roster like this.”

Marc opened his eyes while the two clung to each other. Yes, it was a sight he remembered well. A luxury for those who could afford vacations, he thought of the journey of teleportation as a sight to see in and of itself. Undulating clouds of fractals bloomed in the distance, the crests and troughs of waves beyond the three dimensions painting a picture every moment spent in this inbetween that lay on the boundary of realities.

Nova tried experimentally sticking a gooey finger out of the pipelike highway they were being shot along. The moment she breached the barrier, all parts of her outside were corroded by the entropy of existence, melting away to dust and then to ultimately nothing. Marc dragged her away from the edge with both arms.

“Careful. Teleportation is very dangerous. Stick close and move as little as possible.”

She eagerly embraced him with the type of whole body hug only a slime could give, shrinking away from the chaotic space that surrounded them on all sides. A turn of the head revealed a bright sun at the end of the pipe. By the time the thought passed through her human brain, they had already met it. White filled all vision, and then they were in the capsule again.

Or not. This was definitely a different capsule. In front of them, a pristine oak desk, a few chairs sitting on the opposite side of a cushy leather throne fit for an emperor. Balls of yarn hung from potted ferns, relegated to sitting in the corners of the room. A window let in light from the sun, where the office space sat high above the rest of the city. It seemed in the ten or so seconds they spent in the otherworld, they’d traveled from the ground floor to the top of the space at speeds to boggle the mind. It wasn’t even the fastest trip. Teleportation time scaled logarithmically with distance.

No time to admire the warm yellow wallpaper or the soft rug lining the floor, nor the cat toys lying in and around a basket of treats. The superior leather chair spun around, revealing a more intimidating catgirl, wearing just a dress shirt, business slacks, and expensive leather shoes that were the type to make a satisfying clack when they hit tiled flooring. A little badge on her chest signified she was from HR, and a glittering hair tie kept her auburn hair in a ponytail. She gave him a lion’s grin, gesturing for the two to sit down.

“No PDA in the office, Applicant #59602. Let’s talk business.”

"A bit heavy with the whole catgirl theme. I thought you guys were more general biotech specialists."

“Ah, it’s good for the branding. Nothing more recognizable than the symbol of Japanese character design co-opted for capitalist utopian excess. Plus, a lot more people are interested in this kind of thing than you’d think. Anyway, you’re supposed to be the one being questioned. Now we switch roles. I am the interrogator.”

Marc slipped into one of the chairs, patting the seat of another to convince Nova to sit down with him. A new experience for her, since slimes did very little sitting, and much more turning-into-a-pancake on the ground. Now; a game of wits, between questioner and questionee.

“First question. Why did you apply specifically to our corporation, as opposed to the many others in this city?”

“Word on the street is that workplace conditions here far surpass everyone else. At least I probably won’t have to worry about being marked for death for doing my job a little too well.”

“Interesting response. Second question. What do you bring to the team here? What about your skills makes you, specifically, irreplaceable?”

He thought about it for a second, then poked Nova in the side. She glanced between him and the HR representative, bewildered.

“Useful Empowerments aren’t a dime-a-dozen, right? You wouldn’t find anything like this anywhere else.”

The woman presented him with a holopad displaying images of prominent tamers in the news, articles going back decades.

“We’ve had trainers before. Slimes, especially, since they’re so easy to keep as pets. What makes yours special? The weird color?”

“Nova, can you show her what you bought yesterday? The caliber and name, if you remember.”

Her words slurred together as she tried to pronounce the nuances of human speech correctly, coming out as a moderately intelligible shy mumbling.

“I have… a Monocaliber .410 bore semi-automatic shotgun. Ummm… it is Tinker-designed.”

That did pique the representative's interest somewhat. An animal attaining sapience? Unheard of.

“Incredible. You’re telling me you trained her to be a human? To become human-shaped and talk too? She must have Empowerment as well to grant her such awareness.”

Marc decided to leave out the part where Nova could grow human skin and hair and flawlessly imitate any person on the street by appearance. No need to start rumors about a skinwalker among the populace. Thank God those weren’t real. There was a non-zero chance that one might be created via Empowerment, so every day without one was another blessed day of life for everyone.

“It’s not just training. She is actually that intelligent now. My Empowerment, [Soulbound], is level 3. I’m not sure what the upper bound of my ability is, but all of this here is just the signing bonus for using my power. It’ll probably grow a lot more over time, and I think you might like running some tests on her.”

“Lucky you. Ever think of buying lottery tickets?”

“Well, as a matter of fact—”

“Don’t even finish that. Third question…”

She stood up from her chair with a serious expression, leaning over the table towards Marc such that her full height (over six feet) towered over him like he was an ant being inspected by higher beings.

“CATS OR DOGS?”

“Cats, obviously.”

She appeared to be trying to scan his intentions with her eyes to see whether he was truthful or lying to appease.

“Close enough. You pass.”

“Hooray! When do I start?”

“Start? No, you still have to pass the physical.”

“The what?”

She snapped her fingers, and a trapdoor opened under him, dropping Marc and Nova down, down, down a shaft that led straight into a massive ball pit. The chairs flung the plastic balls in every direction upon impact, right before the other two split the sea of color as they sunk into the pool. Nova easily climbed out, expanding in size to increase surface area and decrease density, dragging out a stunned Marc by the collar of his shirt. When he regained his wits, he saw a massive multi-purpose gymnasium arrayed out before him, equipped with racks of weaponry, piles of fake terrain, and forcefield projectors boxing off many areas.

In front of him, a line of twenty or so people stood around in front of a hulking man that was completely shirtless. His body hair was more like a fur coat than anything human, and his ears more closely matched a bear’s ears than a cat. One of the men standing in line turned around to see Nova pulling Marc’s sorry ass out of the unnecessary massive ball pit.

“So that’s what that was for. Hey, kid.”

Marc looked up into the eyes of Suvert, a smirk tugging at his lips. He swiveled, meeting a lot of unfamiliar faces, and Avalle gave him a little wave from the end of the line. At least he recognized two of the other twenty applicants. The large bearlike staff member clapped his hands together with enough force to produce a visible shockwave of wind, even if for only a moment.

“So we’re all here. Sorry for the wait, everyone, we had a special case pending. Now, let's begin. How many of you here are combat specialists, or intending to become that?”

Marc raised his hand. Nova did too, but he pulled her hand down, since she was technically with him. Suvert did not, while Avalle did. Ten of the remainder did too.

“Good. I’m feeling a little on-the-fence today. We’re gonna be testing your combat capabilities with a little competition, though winning or losing won’t massively affect your chances of being hired. I’m here to be a referee and evaluate you based on your particular skill set. Now; would you all rather duel or have a team battle? If you want, it can be 6v6, 4v4v4, 3v3v3v3, or 2v2v2v2v2v2.”

A quick vote revealed the obvious. A six versus six. Red versus blue, chocolate versus vanilla, rich versus poor. The old us versus them that simplified all conflict down to good and evil.

“It seems you’ve all decided. Let us begin. CAGE ON!”

The bearkin man clapped his mighty hands together and its thunder nearly blew everyone off their feet. Around them, a massive rectangular box 100 meters long and wide was denoted by the sudden appearance of a shining barrier projected between devices attached to the ceiling and floor. The roof above was at least ten meters off the ground to account for aerial maneuvering as well. They generated a quiet, but audible buzz.

“This is going to be your battlefield. Something is missing though… Shuf!”

“You got it!”

A thin wiry wolfboy held out both hands in front of himself, concentrating with both eyes closed. The boxes and other props at the far end of the massive room started to tremble, then shake with violent force as they were torn away from their position to be flung through the air. These giant projectiles nearly instantly arrested their own movement midair, dropping lightly on certain areas of the denoted battle arena, forming a few different areas. A stretch of false forest bordered a hilly, rolling plain. Watching over it all was a set of fake buildings, with rooms and windows to peek out of and simple paint jobs to make it feel a little more realistic.

Marc noted it as an interesting Empowerment. Was it some kind of incredible psychic ability?

“Thanks, Shuf. I don’t know how anyone could talk shit about being able to rearrange furniture so fast.”

Never mind. Still, he didn’t fancy being splatted by large wooden structures being thrown around at car-esque speeds. Definitely a powerful Empowerment. The bearman snapped his fingers, and two zones appeared on both sides of the arena, lit up by two sets of lights. One had a projection of two swords clashing, placed deep into the forest area. The other was a shield, all the way on top of a simple wall erected to separate the fake city from the hilly plain.

“I expect the more clever of you already know what’s going on. This will be no simple boxing ring slugfest; I know some of your abilities must be better suited to certain tasks over others, and here you’ll have your chance to show that off. Team Steel Edge will be an attacking force, attempting to infiltrate the city and complete the objective.”

At that word, a podium rose from the ground deep within the city area. On it was a large glass orb. Strangely, it seemed to pulse with energy in a rhythm of soft waves on sandy shores.

“That right there is a mana sink. More than a few Empowerments tap into this mysterious energy, using it as the source of their abilities. Team Iron Shield, you’re gonna be responsible for making sure it isn’t broken. If you have anyone on your team that uses mana, you are not allowed to draw any from the objective. If you can successfully defend it for ten minutes before reinforcements arrive to bail you out, you win. If Team Steel Edge breaks it completely, you lose.”

His speech done, he turned around and leapt forward, rolling as he hit the ground dozens of feet away, on the other side of the barrier.

“You all have five minutes to sort yourselves into two teams of six. I expect you to do this yourself. Social ability and teamwork is a necessary component to succeeding in a squad-based environment that we’re intending to put you in. Good luck, all twelve of you. Go!”

The barrier, previously a shimmering pane of fluid, instantly appeared to harden, becoming static and grid-like. Marc felt a bit of sweat beading on his forehead as him and the other candidates all looked at each other uncertainly. He was going to have to make some friends, quick. Before that… he spotted Avalle out of the corner of his eye, sharing looks with the rest of the applicants. He was gonna have to declare a team affiliation, and he could only hope it matched with her.

Amidst the whispering between the fighters, Marc was the first to plant himself on a team; Team Steel Edge. The decisiveness of his choice appeared to move a few others, who shuffled towards their own team choices.

Avalle disappeared into the heavy forest, along with another man, lean and formally dressed. Two others came to stand next to Marc, in the city where the objective was located. One was a silent statue, wearing a purple cultist’s robes. He couldn’t make out anything under the hood, for it was all dark. If he didn’t know better, he’d assume it was a ghost puppeting clothes, the way they seemed to hover over the ground instead of walking. Across their chest an eye sign was emblazoned in red to denote their worship.

The other was a teen of dark complexion. Adorned with a Spanish nobleman’s splendor, it would not be unreasonable to believe he’d been ripped straight out of the Renaissance era. A flashy titanium alloy rapier hung from his belt, a silver bell hanging right where the handguard met the blade itself. Strangely, he did not speak Spanish, but Old English instead. A bit of a jarring experience for any historians.

“Ah, so thou two shall be mine teammates! Allow us to sally forth and break the wills of our enemies upon our walls, shaded by steel and lead!”

There was most certainly some kind of grammatical error in there. Surely this guy had to be a LARPer or something of the like. The duelist quickly grew distracted, poking at Nova, who shyly stood behind Marc’s back like a kid forced to stare at a wall during timeout.

“Oh! A most peculiar specimen! To whom doth I owe the pleasure?”

He bowed at a ninety degree angle, and Marc had to answer in her place.

“She’s Nova, with me. Please don’t disturb her too much, she’s not very social.”

“A fair maiden of slime, bound by the hip? Is it not best to let a woman fly free of her shackles, a dove soaring through summer sky?”

“I don’t see how that’s important to the battle we’re gonna fight. Can you even use that rapier?”

In a flash the blade was withdrawn and the point brought to a foot away from his face, the silly pride of the duelist suddenly replaced by a dark expression of grave offense.

“You’d doubt my honor?”

“Oh, uh, no, I was just wondering, that’s all! Not many people who use rapiers, haha…”

He sheathed his rapier at his belt once again, holding out his hand in an invitation of a handshake.

“Then there is no insult. Apologies for my haste. I greet you as Nadal Romero, the Untouchable!”

Wow. This one really had an ego, with the fit to match. Marc took his hand anyway. Best to play nice with the people he would have to fight with. The cultist was not so amicable.

“NO HORSEPLAY. A GREAT BATTLE LIES AHEAD, AND WE MUST DO OUR UTMOST TO SECURE A GLORIOUS VICTORY.”

Great, Marc thought. Another crazy. The voice was androgynous, but exceedingly heavy in tone. Each word felt like a dumbbell dropped on his head. If everyone spoke in lowercase, this person spoke with caps lock on.

“OUR TEAM IS NOT YET COMPLETE. THERE ARE SEVEN REMAINING. THIS IS OUR FIRST TEST; WE MUST POACH THE ONES MOST CAPABLE AMONG THE UNSURE.”

That much was true. Seven stood warily, talking to each other and thinking about which team to throw their lot in with. While victory was not explicitly listed as boosting their chances, it seemed likely that a clean sweep would have a greater chance at impressing their proctor. One of them was the picturesque image of a magical girl, a shining iridescent beacon of color, with two pink ponytails and a wand topped by a gold star. She turned to the instructor and called out.

“Excuse me, sir, how much force are we allowed to use? Wouldn’t it be dangerous to fight for real?”

“No worries, miss! The test is being monitored very closely by some employees. They’ll make sure that any lethal blows are reduced to nothing more than a tough punch. However, if any of you are forced to endure a fatal hit, or are otherwise incapacitated, you will be removed from the remainder of the test. It is vital that no one is seriously injured during the course of the battle.”

Good to know. Now it was time to choose. Which talents would Marc try to convince to join Team Steel Edge?

“You two stay here and scope out the buildings. We’re gonna have to fight our way through there soon. I’ll go grab a few more members.”

“I see! Then may fortune guide thy hand to blessed fate!”

“THEN RETURN SUCCESSFUL. I EXPECT NO FAILURE.”

Marc hopped off the wall, trudging over to the group deep in conversation.

“This can’t be the only test, right?” murmured a spidergirl, thoughtful and calm while her spider half nervously scanned the room for threats.

“No, it would be reductive to reduce our capabilities to the outcome of a single impromptu team battle,” spoke a doctor of clay, form constantly shifting.

A war veteran rubbed the stubble on his chin, giving his response:“Well, we’ve only got a few minutes to choose what team to be on. We’ll deal with the rest as we come across it.”

Marc coughed to get their attention, feeling a little exposed as the seven turned to him simultaneously. Their expectant stares caused him to falter somewhat as he tried to convince some of them to join his team.

“Well said, sir. I already picked a team, Steel Edge, so I was hoping I could get some of you to join us. Especially you, mister veteran.”

“Just call me Mil. What makes you think I’d be worth having on your team?”

“I figured you’d be the one most used to fighting out of all of us. That kind of wisdom I think would be really useful.”

A grin tugged at Mil’s lips, and he seemed more receptive to Marc all of a sudden.

“I’m glad someone appreciates it. A lot of my past employers would rather have flashy superpowers than someone with their head screwed on right. I’m in.”

Next, Marc turned to the doctor, whose body boiled under his clothes.

“And you’re a doctor, right?”

“That I am. Certified by the American Board of Medical Specialties for over twenty years.”

“We could definitely use a support member on our team. That way, minor wounds won’t snowball into something worse on the battlefield.”

“But my Empowerment is not related to healing others, exactly. Instead I’m just made of clay.”

He demonstrated by rapidly shifting into a puddle, then a rectangular prism, then a pyramid, then back to being human shaped. Marc gave him a small round of applause.

“Still very useful. You could take quite a few hits without losing anything meaningful. In fact, you could easily store lots of stuff in your body like medical supplies or weapons. Or maybe you’ve already thought of that?”

“Clever. Well, I don’t mind. I’ve no preference on what side to be on.”

“Great! Then let’s head back and start brainstorming what to do…”

“—wait!”

They were about to leave when a panicked call stopped Marc in his tracks. The magical girl from earlier looked hesitant trying to pitch herself to the team.

“I’d like to join too! I can do a lot of things!”

“Like what?”

“Well, I can use the power of day and night to fight. I can shoot beams of starlight, and I can change the local day-night cycle!”

Mil sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. He pointed at her wand, commenting, “How many times have you fought with that? Your stance is all wrong. At best, you fight like a backliner, and at worst I don’t think you’ve ever had to seriously duel anyone as strong as yourself.”

“That’s not true! I’ve fought at least a dozen people, and they were all pretty strong!” She grew incensed at the shade Mil had thrown on her, pointing an accusing finger at him. “I’d probably beat you in a minute!”

“Oh? Is that so? You wanna test that?”

Marc had to break them up, standing in between them.

“I’m glad you guys are ready to fight, but I’d like it if you saved that until the battle starts? Just let her join, Mil. I’m sure she’s more useful then she looks.”

“Thank you… wait. Wait a second.”

“Hmm? Couldn’t hear you, too far away! I’m walking towards the rest of our team now, so I won’t be able to hear anything if you don’t follow me!!!”

Marc skillfully deflected any chance of being called out for his snide remark by power-walking back to the city with the veteran and the doctor trailing behind him. Faced with no other choice, the magical girl had to follow as well. He came upon the cultist and the duelist marking the buildings.

“Hey, I’m back with three more members! What’re you guys doing?”

“I SEE YOU’RE SUCCESSFUL. NOW LET US HOPE YOUR JUDGMENT IS AS GOOD.”

“You’ve returned! Thou shall want not for concern, for I and mine compatriot hast crafted a resolve most unassailable! Observe, for these lines I carve with this point of mine blade shall inform us of the quickest path towards our goal!”

Marc sat down on the wooden floor on the inside of the building they stood in, leaning against the wall.

“Alright, let’s all sit down and introduce ourselves really quick before we have to do this. I’m Marc, and my Empowerment is, uh… where is she, exactly?”

Everyone else gave him a look like he was stupid, right before Nova slithered in through the window from a higher floor, giving the veteran a great shock. He pointed his knife at her in fear.

“Shit, it's a carnislime! Get back!”

“No, put the knife down! She’s with me! It’s my Empowerment, [Soulbound]. She’s basically my familiar. Where’ve you been, anyway!”

“Brbb… I wass on the roof. Watching everyone elss.”

Nova definitely still had to work on her speech a little more. The doctor raised an eyebrow.

“In all my years learning biology, I’ve never seen a slime that talks before.”

“Okay but that’s not important right now. We need to come up with a plan, now! We don’t have time to share stories, that can wait until post-assessment.”

The doctor shuffled awkwardly, morphing into a sitting position on the ground.

“I suppose that’s true. To all of you, I am Cotta. I have the ability to rapidly shapeshift since I’m made entirely out of clay. Next?”

The veteran planted himself next to the doctor, briefly inspecting the condition of his pistol.

“I’m Mil. Started out working in the Army. Just a fresh face when everything went to shit. Seen it all. I don’t have an Empowerment, but I’ve beaten my fair share of ‘em.”

The magical girl waved her wand, and an infinitely thin disc of light appeared on the floor for her to sit down on, legs crossed.

“Hi, I’m Stella Skyward, but you can just call me Stella. I’m a branch of mage-type Empowerments. The spells I can cast are more related to the sky and space.”

The duelist sat perched directly on his own rapier. It stood straight up, with the point digging into the ground, his body balanced precariously on the handle.

“Greetings, ladies and gentlemen! i am Nadal Romero, the Untouchable! I hast the ability to move exactly how I desiren without fail! With such precision I may dismantle e'en the toughest of opponents!”

The cultist did not even bother with the pretense of camaraderie, electing to stand-hover ominously at the edge of their get-together.

“REFER TO ME AS IMACULA. UNDER THE FAITH OF IT WHO LIVES ABOVE, I MAY SUMMON LIMITED NUMBERS OF ITS LEGION TO AID US IN BATTLE.”

To demonstrate, they raised one arm, wreathed and hidden within their robes, and a swirl of blood coalesced from nothing to form a single flying eyeball. It hovered in place, spinning around to take in its surroundings, before lazily drawing circles in the air above their heads like a toy plane on a string mounted to the ceiling.

A motley crew he’d gathered, and one he worried about having to fight with. He’d never met them before, and now he was just expected to fight alongside them as a functional unit? Terrible. The cultist, Imacula, echoed his concerns out loud for everyone to hear.

“WHILE I APPRECIATE THE DIVERSITY OF YOUR ABILITIES. DO ANY OF YOU HAVE AN ACTUAL PLAN TO APPROACH THE ENEMY WITH? OR SHALL I HAVE TO TAKE THE REINS?”

“We should have the doctor try digging a tunnel under the ground all the way to the objective. It’d be a sneaky way to break the orb pretty quickly.”

The cultist considered Marc’s suggestion, pointing at the doctor.

“IS THIS WITHIN YOUR CAPABILITY, COTTA?”

“Somewhat. I cannot risk growing too thin, but I could maybe comfortably dig there within the time limit. It’d be best if I started digging somewhere closer to save time.”

Stella began to levitate as the disc she was sitting on rose into the air silently. Another wave of the wand created a few floating shields around her out of starlight, orbiting her like planets around the sun.

“I can cover you, but they’ll probably see you dig.”

Mil began carving lines into the ground with his combat knife, illustrating the triple divide between forest, plain, and city. He planted the blade directly where the forest was.

“We start here. First, we push out to the plains early to cover more ground. Imacula, what’s the range of your eye friends? Can they fight?”

“AS BIG AS THE CITY. RANGE IS NO ISSUE. THEY ARE ALSO ABLE TO PROJECT CONCENTRATED BEAMS AND ALLOW ME TO SEE AT GREAT DISTANCE.”

“Perfect. Send in a group of them, all spread out, so we can get a visual on the enemy. Marc, Nadal, I need you both to screen him while you all push forwards.”

“Of course! This shall be a quick affair. Allow us to pierce their lines and strike where they are most vulnerable!”

Marc drew his finger across the expected trajectory they’d be following. There was one inconsistency that made him itch.

“What’ll you do, Mil? I don’t see you on the plans.”

“I’ll make sure the good doctor here gets to where he needs to go. Stella, try flying the doctor with you over us. If he falls it’ll look like an accident and he might get a chance to burrow into the ground.”

“You got it! I’ll try to hit them while flying but it’s kind of a hard shot.”

“Good. I’ll be right behind you, Marc, and your… slime friend.”

Another deafening clap rocked the arena, the fake leaves of the prop trees rustling with the shockwave. The bearman’s voice carried throughout the room.

“It’s time! Everyone to starting positions! Hup hup!”

Both teams passed each other as they walked to where they would start. Tension stirred as both sides glared with defiant stares, plans laid to lead them to victory. Suvert by the sidelines called out from beyond the barrier.

“Good luck out there!”

Marc took notice of the density of the trees around him, and the ease with which someone could hide within, taking potshots from relative cover. It all depended on how the enemy would move.

“Alright, everyone ready? Five!”

He swallowed nervously. Would him and Nova be enough?

“Four!”

He checked his hardlight blade projector. It was still as pristine as ever.

“Three!”

Discs of light manifested to lift Cotta and Stella into the air, and Imacula and Nadal leaned forwards, preparing to run.

“Two!”

Marc’s ballistic shield beeped quietly. A light turned green to show it was ready to deploy.

“One!”

Time to make the first move.

# “GO!”

It was a sudden burst of action for both sides. Legs pumped as Marc, Nadal, and Mil leapt over uneven terrain, dodging tree trunks and low branches to cross the 30 meters of forest as fast as possible. Imacula defied logic by simply flying forward at high speed, though their cloak scarcely left the ground while doing so. Cotta and Stella were worse off, as she couldn’t make sharp turns with the subpar maneuverability of her floating discs. It was clear her flight ability was meant for open skies: a luxury she couldn’t afford, lest they spot her early.

Nadal’s superior use of his body sent him across the threshold between woodland and rolling plains first. The moment he did, he leapt out of the way of a storm of projectiles aimed at where he was just a second before. Forty meters away, on the wall of the city, the cyborg suppressed the duelist with bursts of bullets aimed precisely at his location, forcing Nadal to keep himself out of the barrel’s trajectory as much as possible.

“Halt, friends! The enemies hast revealed themselves! One fires from the wall, take cover!”

Mil returned fire from the edge of the treeline with his own rifle, barely grazing the metal surface of the cyborg’s arm. He grew increasingly frustrated trying to pin down the cybernetic enemy. His augmentations were not purely designed for offensive power, but information processing and strategy as well. A skull implant delegated important calculations and muscle memory to machines, allowing for much greater accuracy. There was no way for Mil to do meaningful damage without taking hits of his own.

Thankfully, he didn’t need to. Nova’s form stiffened abruptly, the free flowing edges of her contours becoming rigid. Her body grew more defined, until she was a perfect glass sculpture of a woman with one hand on the fore-end of the shotgun and the other on the trigger. Her hand contracted, and BANG! A spray of buckshot chipped off bits of the wall and a lucky hit pricked the man of steel and wire. And yet, it did almost nothing. A cyborg of his stature had long upgraded his exterior to be impervious to small arms fire. Without a close shot or a heavy slug, it would do little more than tickle him.

Still, it made him flinch just long enough for a dozen eyeballs to come soaring out of the trees, pinprick beams of light blasting his visual sensors in attack runs. They move more like planes than helicopters, so they couldn’t each maintain a constant beam on the target, but the combined force of multiple caused his metallic exterior to heat up. He brought his arms up to block, but he couldn’t let them fire unopposed for too long, or else his body would fail from too much heat or the lasers would bore a hole into his internal circuitry.

Enter the spider queen! She didn’t have an entourage of arachnids at her beck and call, but she made up for it with her web-slinging skills straight out of a Spiderman comic. Sticky webbing shot out of the spider’s abdomen, snaring eye after eye and bisecting them cleanly in a single hit with the scything sharpness of her front legs. Her human half didn’t even have to do anything, merely content with observing the progress of the battle.

The cyborg would not be outdone. A pair of shoulder-mounted beam cannons unfolded from its hiding spot behind the collarbone. Both quickly spat out brief bursts of uninterrupted laser fire, in greater quality than the eyes could. Each shot lasted only a second, taking a few extra to recharge, but it was enough to burn a sizable hole in each flying eyeball. They weren’t hard to track with their predictable plane-esque movement and the targeting subsystem he possessed.

For every eyeball shot down or yanked from the air, one or two more would take its place. Imacula hung a few meters back from the frontlines, arms in the air. From the depths of their robes, dozens more eyeballs emerged, the flesh of their connective tissue to human skulls trailing behind them in a most macabre display. This distraction was enough for Mil to start actually hitting shots on the cyborg, forcing him to hunker down. Nova managed to fumble slugs into the chamber instead of buckshot, lifting the gun with shaky, slimy hands and pointing the barrel at the big spider’s silhouette in the distance.

BANG! Her shitty aim meant the shot went wide, but the threat of a fat metal cylinder penetrating the massive spider’s carapace and scrambling its brain sent it scrabbling backwards, much to the chagrin of the human torso piloting it. Another shot cracked against the stone wall. A beautiful web of cracks that could be seen from the inner side of the wall mollified the spider queen’s operator somewhat.

In the chaos, Nadal took his chance to blaze forward, rapier in hand as he tried to rapidly close the distance. Almost immediately, great spikes of earth and rock sprung out of the ground in front of the wall to give him pause. The farmer raised his pitchfork triumphantly from where he had just climbed onto the battlements.

“[Lay of the Land]! I already know this place like the back of my hand! None shall pass!”

The flat and agreeable ground suddenly became a spikefield. Sprouting spines of stone pierced through the gymnasium floor, eliciting a sigh from the instructor. All too common for an Empowerment’s ideal use case to involve the ground somehow. At least he wouldn’t have to pay for the repairs directly, even if the cost trickled down to their paychecks.

The plains were now a geometric nightmare. It barely slowed Nadal down, but dancing over the sharp edges threatening to impale his feet didn’t stop the farmer from raising more rows of rocky pikes to constrain where the duelist could go. It wasn’t quickcast geomancy, but the range and area affected meant it was practically impossible to avoid running into the morphing hazards of the terrain. Nadal sprung upwards onto the side of a particularly horizontal barb of packed dirt, only to jump away as more spikes sought to put him out of the game in one fatal hit.

A whoosh accompanied Stella as she popped out from the tree cover, having finished navigating the aerial obstacle course. Her eyes swept over the unfolding chaos in a flash, and she aimed her wand at the flighty spider queen.

“Moonlight Blade: Arc of Night!”

A glittering white sheet of pure light shot forth from the five-pointed metal star, nearly severing a leg. But the paranoid spider-half was too fast, too anxious, scrambling away at the closest sign of danger. The light dug a perfect slit into the ground, and the spider retaliated by trying to drag her out of the air with well-placed web slings. More than a few of Stella’s barriers were yanked from the air and dematerialized in place of new ones.

“Can you handle her?!” the doctor yelled over the sound of gunfire.

She began chaining barrier spells together, regenerating them faster than the overgrown arachnid could tear them down. “Yes, I’m fine,” she spat despite the sweat beading on her skin.

The cyborg struggled to contain the huge number of eyes by himself, only for swarms of wasps to suddenly begin consuming one after another in quick succession. In seconds they could mulch one beyond repair, and when they began spreading out the eyes damaged by a few stings could no longer aim accurately. Mil grunted unhappily while listening to the sound of a few more rounds burying themselves in the tree he hid behind.

From where Marc stood, he could see the well-dressed man standing on top of the wall beside the spider queen. Nova’s whole body rippled slightly with the recoil of another slug, only for it to be stopped inches from the target by a ghostly blue arm. So there the man stood, two oversized arms of ether preventing Nova from getting a clean shot on the only opponent big enough to be hit.

It was a bad matchup. The doctor wasn’t actively contributing to the attack with his current position, straining Stella instead, and Marc was still hanging back with his anti-ballistic gear and hardlight blade projector. One minute in and they were already on the backfoot, no thanks to Marc. Something needed to change, to tip the scales in their favor.

Nova tossed her shotgun to Marc, who fumbled to catch it. It went off, and the terrific crack of the shot was an assault to his senses. By the time he came to grips with the firearm in his hands, she was already off, sprinting past where the slug had dug itself into the dirt close to Marc’s feet. Spines and spikes were walls of bramble, barbed and sharp they pierced her feet. But she kept going. Such minor loss was noticeable, and in seconds she would regenerate what was lost to be torn away again by the hostile battlefield.

The cyborg turned his attention to Nova briefly, loosing a wave of lead pellets at her with an almost dismissive wave of his mechanical hand. Most struck the target, punching holes right through her toughened slime. To his unease, it was ineffectual. Nova’s rigidity at this time meant every bullet passed right through, the majority of her body untouched due to inertia. To her they were minor wounds, costing small amounts of energy rather than being crippling blows. Still, her movements grew erratic as she twisted and scrambled forward with dexterity and flexibility beyond any human.

Shots rang out, finding purchase on the dented and damaged frontal armor of the cybernetic. A grunt, then return fire to suppress Mil. The man raised a hand to the side of his head, fingers pushing a button he knew was there.

“Enemy approaching, front. Yiel, contain it.”

The earpiece screeched its scratchy message into the farmer’s ear. The guy was waving his pitchfork around like a staff channeling power to summon more and more obstacles to box in Nadal. A shame he was too slippery to pin. Again and again, Nadal would dash out of the way of a spike, or turn just right to scrape by sprouting earthen jaws. Both visibly sweat, the considerable exertion dragging them out of their comfort zones. Yiel practically screamed a response into his mic.

“I CAN’T! Got my hands full with this one! Can’t let him loose!”

“Do it or it’s gonna reach you! QUICKLY!”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her rapid approach. Nova flung herself forward fearlessly at speeds to surpass Nadal, who had to worry about being stabbed. Fearful, he raised a hand and drew on his inner well of power to create a sudden cage of stone spires that isolated her from the rest of the battle. Nadal’s window of opportunity to advance was cut short right after, a fence of overlapping pikes presenting a strong front against him.

It was all too easy for Nova to climb out, leaping from the perch of the impromptu prison. She flicked a wrist, and spider’s webbing sprang forth from her body in sufficient quantity to latch onto the battlements, similar to how she’d seen the spider queen perform. Yiel’s pitchfork was meant for farming, not battle, but it began to glow with a heavy brown sheen that let it rip the webs from the wall. He yanked it above his head, pulling Nova hard enough for her to overshoot the wall. Momentarily disoriented, she craned her head to see the tines of the pitchfork aimed squarely at her. On this trajectory, she’d find herself impaled.

And impale it did; she crashed directly into the farmer, who was surprised she wasn’t stopped by the tines. He lay dazed on the ground, covered in two halves of a slime neatly bisected. Not for long! Nova’s upper torso was fine, so she swiftly began reforming, reattaching broken sections of herself and repairing the bonds briefly broken between her cells. Yiel was incensed. Beaten by this… this slime?! He wouldn’t have it! He snatched his pitchfork from where it’d fallen, and flinched at the sound of a thin titanium rod tapping the forcefield over his neck. Nadal stood there, tired but triumphant.

“And I claim first blood!”

“Yiel is eliminated!”

That second cry was from the loudspeakers situated on the gymnasium walls in the background. Stella grinned, hope on her mind.

“Yes! We can win th—”

And the webbing had her by the waist! In an instant her barriers in front of her all shattered at once, snapping her thread of thought. In the interim the spider queen finally managed to lash her target, yanking her off her flying disc and into the waiting blades of her forearms. The disc disappeared, and Cotta fell to the ground while a forcefield covered Stella’s injured body from an arachnid’s scything legs.

“Stella is eliminated!”

Not even two minutes, and one had fallen on both sides. Her wand clattered to the ground, spinning end over end. The infuriated cyborg swerved to face them, ignoring his opponent to lift his other arm. The hand retracted, a large barrel aiming at Nova, the easier of the two to hit. She didn’t know what he was gonna do. Shoot a huge bullet? Nadal knew better than her, and bolted forwards, a mix of a pull and a shove to throw them both off the walls; just in time, as the impact grenade blew a chunk out of the stone barrier sending chunks of rock flying everywhere.

She hit the ground with a splat. The general ooziness of her body cushioned Nadal, who’d taken the brunt of the shrapnel and now looked injured. His pristine clothes were torn, and he clearly favored one leg over the other. She raced to pull her body together again for a second time, grasping the handle of the fallen wand. She couldn’t return it to Stella right now, for she was enclosed in a bubble on the ground, isolated from the rest of the battle.

# “EVERYONE, NOW!”

At once all combatants turned to the source of the sound, Mil’s arm outstretched as a selection of grenades left his arms. He too ran for the walls, Imacula disappearing alone into the dark cover of forest. No one had time to react before the flash and the smoke crashed into all of them like a freight train. For precious seconds, everyone was left dazed. Even the eyeballs swerved up into the sky in their confusion. Sight slowly returned, Nova dragging herself towards the objective with wand in tow. Nadal dashed towards the spider queen standing on the ground, piercing one thin leg with his rapier.

Pain flared through the limb. The spider half swung furiously, trying to decapitate the one who hurt it. Every swipe Nadal leaned out of the way, the human half attempting to wrangle the disobedient insect below it. Rather than push forward, the duelist kept his distance, allowing himself to be pushed back instead of risking a blow. Every time his blade lanced forward, the well-dressed man with two ghastly blue arms protruding from his back snatched at the titanium, seeking to disarm or maybe yank Nadal forward for an easy kill.

At the same time, Mil vaulted through the broken part of the wall the cyborg had blown open, rifle pointed right at the spider queen. A sitting duck, he thought, as a swarm of ants burst from the ground under his feet with the force of an explosion. They crawled over him while he thrashed to escape, dropping the rifle and pulling out a pistol. By now, the man in the suit was aware of him, so when Mil fired, he reached out to snatch the bullet away from his teammate. No dice. The other ghostly arm came up and caught the bullet between two fingers, centimeters away from his face. Mil swore a storm as the insects covered him at last.

“Mil is eliminated!”

Four to five, advantage being on the home team. The situation was deteriorating rapidly. The unnamed cyborg blew a few more eyeballs out of the air before turning the barrel of his rifle arm to Marc, charging forward all by himself. Too late; Marc pulled the trigger. A spray of buckshot shredded his frontal armor, forcing him to bend his knees and leap away with enhanced legs. Every jump carried him a great distance across the rooftops of false buildings. The flying eyes swooped in his absence, beginning to burn beams into the backs of Nadal’s opponents.

Quick to anger, the mutant spider swung its huge body around and rapidly webbed multiple of them, littering the ground with their corpses. Flanking her was impossible, the suited man advancing slowly with both powerful arms at his call. It was too dangerous for Nadal to strike at these strange phantom limbs that sprouted from human spine. One wrong move and he’d be crippled, especially considering his condition.

# CRACK

The bang was incredibly loud now that there was no more gunfire. The squads of eyeballs Imacula was so proud of were quickly reduced to nothing. A clump of robes fell over at the impact, despite the hasty forcefield generated to save their life.

“Imacula is eliminated!”

Marc cursed a hundred gods and more under his breath. What rotten, rotten luck! Had he picked his teammates wrong? Nadal was boxed in now, facing two opponents and likely about to be razed by the entomologist. Where, where, where, there! Peeking out from behind a building! She was wearing an expression of disgust, snapping her fingers at the ground. A weird gesture, but one immediately justified by the fountain of more ants pouring forth from the earth, along with the clay doctor carried with the wave. He had tried his best, but the packed earth the farmer had created slowed him down too much, and the endless insects swept him away in their grasp.

Shit. SHIT. SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIT. He was gonna have to throw himself in the line of fire again, huh?

Up came the barrel, a pristine tube of metal. Shell loaded. Marc braced his right leg behind himself, swinging the tip to point at the spider queen. His entrance already attracted the attention of his opponents, but it was no matter. By the time anyone could have known about the outcome, a trigger pull expelled a wall of pellets with enough ferocity to mulch the carapace of the spider’s abdomen. It screeched horrifically with insectile terror, skittering away with surprising speed. In a flash it was gone, vanishing among the alleyways between buildings.

Then the bugs came for Nadal at last. They dropped the dazed doctor, disoriented from being tossed and twirled every which way, surging forth in a tidal wave of chittering madness. Though he struggled, he could not hope to break free from an opponent who surrounded him in every direction. There was nowhere to even stand anymore, for he was buried beneath their legs, their antennae, their twitching mandibles.

“Nadal Romero is eliminated!”

Oh, how he ran. His legs pumped rhythmically as Marc pushed deeper into the city, the slowass man unable to catch him. HIs intuition veered him to the side out of the way of a barrage of bullets. He ignored the cyborg gunning for his throat and fired once, twice, three times at the entomologist scrambling to find a place to hide. How many did he miss? He knew he hit at least one, as the familiar iridescent bubble trapped the scientist below its sturdy surface. The pellets sparked as they were deflected, creating a horrible scraping sound that almost subsumed the sound of the loudspeakers.

“Ver is eliminated!”

So that was her name. He leapt through the open windows of an apartment complex, fierce lines of lead tracing his every step. Splinters brushed past his face with every close shave. So close he could taste it. He saw the markings on the wall, the evidence left behind by his teammates. Just a little more and he would make it. Follow the arrows, the lines. Thirty meters became twenty became ten, and he could see the last building in front of him. On instinct, he glanced to his left and right, casting his eyes up towards the edges of the wooden towers that flanked both sides.

His roll took him to the ground, hard. Tumbling forward led him to the doorway of the objective building, where he scrambled to cover. Behind him a cloud of dust ruined visibility, the armored cybernetic having pummeled the ground where Marc had stood moments before. He lifted his other robotic arm. Another wave of bullets punctured the wood, blasting everyone behind it with lead. But the cyborg heard no cry of pain, or the telltale announcement of a defeated opponent. No matter, he’d just have to barrel in there and beat the shit out of Marc himself.

Through the door he came so confidently, arm poised to punch with enough force to shatter ribs. Mechanical eyes scanned the right, then the left, only to spot Marc under him, practically at his feet. It all happened so fast; a ballistic shield began to fold itself back into place, dented by the gunfire, and a hardlight blade seared its light into his vision. An edge supremely thin met a fist of steel, and the results…

“Widge is eliminated!”

Both their attacks met forcefields, but one of them was inside, while the other was outside. Marc drew back his trembling arm from the bubble surrounding the furious cyborg. He cast his gaze to the back of the room. Back there, in a closet, the orb would be sitting pretty, waiting for someone to come along and smash it. And as fortune would have it, it would be him. The spider was running away, but the man with the ghostly arms was in fast pursuit. He had no time to waste, the orb was exposed and he would be the one to win for his team!

He took one step.

BANG!

The violence of the caliber left its impact on Marc’s side, as much as the forcefield stopped it in its tracks. It was so powerful that some of the force bled through anyways, knocking the air out of his lungs and sending him sprawling to the floor. How? Where had he gone wrong? He rolled over, panting, and saw the glint of a scope on the second story of a building outside. Sniper.

He should’ve realized, actually. It must’ve been the reason why Stella’s shields exploded all of a sudden. He glared balefully as Avalle pulled herself out of the window, the massive rifle slung over a shoulder. She gave him a shit eating grin.

“How was that?”

Well, at least there was still Cotta left. If they were lucky, he would be able to clinch the victory.

“SHIT!”

The cry of frustration met his ears before Cotta’s body did. The clay of his body was pummeled flat, practically. It was more than disheartening to hear the sound of walls being smashed and Cotta being slammed into the ground nearby. Another forcefield prevented him from being hurt further by the well-dressed man, both ghastly arms tensed with power.

“Alright everyone, Oarin here. It looks like the battle is concluded!”

The bearman’s voice was still very much oppressive. So much so Avalle covered her ears to try and block out some portion of his crushing presence.

“I’d like to congratulate everyone for participating! Some of you more than others, but I can tell you all put in a lot of effort. But as always, every battle has a winner.”

The force fields all around the area lifted. Marc rubbed his eyes in frustration.

“So cheers to the winning team of the day: Team—”

He was interrupted by the sound of a crash. A million tinkling pieces of glass flew through the air, refracting a hundred thousand beams of light every which way as they fell. Whatever mana was in the orb disappeared with a soft sigh, dissolving into the empty space it was free to inhabit. Marc whipped around in confusion.

Nova had assumed the pose of a baseball pitcher right by the podium where the orb had been left to rest. A wand buzzed in her grasp, and her slimy skin shone with the gleam of moonlight. For whatever reason, she looked to be somewhat incorporeal. The starlight of the wand naturally bent the light that coated her skin, making her much harder to spot. She blurbled in some imitation of a happiness noise as she dropped the wand and hugged her soulbound partner.

“D-did it!”

It was a weird textural experience, even more foreign than the time she tried to eat him. At least her speech was improving.

Oarin, the bearman, landed with a heavy thump in the clearing just before the objective building. He grunted when he noticed the remains of the orb lying across what remained of the gym floor. The man in the suit pointed at Nova self-righteously.

“That’s cheating! He was just eliminated, so he’s not supposed to keep commanding his pet while dead!”

Oarin rubbed his beard thoughtfully. He snapped his fingers and pointed at the ground in front of him.

“You, the… slime. Come here a second.”

She shrunk a little like a kid who’d done something wrong. She stared at Marc expectantly until he waved his hand in a ‘sure, you can go’ sort of gesture. Oarin had to bend down to meet Nova face to face when she stood right in front of him.

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Uuuuh… four!”

He was, indeed, holding out four fingers. Oarin gave the man in the suit a shrug.

“She seems autonomous enough. You probably just forgot about taking her down. You can’t call your own failure to check out how someone’s Empowerment works an instance of cheating, Mark.”

Oh man, the guy was totally seething now. His face contorted with a twitching fury that seemed ready to explode out of him at any moment.

Marc held out a hand in a gesture of friendly competition, wearing the most disarming smile he could muster.

“Good game, man. It was very close!”

Mark glared at him like he’d killed his whole family. People have died from stares less intense. Rather than throw a huge tantrum and embarrass himself in front of the referee and his good-natured opponent, he stormed off to go cry about it alone or whatever. Oarin scratched the back of his head in confused apathy.

“I was just giving it to him straight. Dunno what’s with him. We could just rerun the battle in a different format if he wanted to.”

Marc had the first good idea in his entire life up to that point.

“How about we do a showdown? Two people per team, six teams? Battle to the death style.”

“Simple enough. I could see it working. But why in pairs? How would that help me, the examiner, learn more about whether you should be hired or not?”

“There’s more than a few corporations in the city. Seems like it would be a smart idea to assess how quickly we could plot and execute a plan to eliminate all other teams in chaotic scenarios.”

Oarin pulled a holopad out of a pocket, tapping on it carefully before giving his thoughts.

“An interesting way to look at it. Sure, we can do that. Everyone needs some time to recover, though, so you’ll have to wait a while.”

While everyone else was taking a rest or being attended to by medical staff with medi-pens, Marc briefly considered who he should take as a partner in the second battle.

“Fancy meeting you here, huh?”

Avalle smiled gently at his approach. She slung her sniper over her back, the components neatly folding up into a portable package to be carried around anywhere.

“Same to you. Did you have fun?”

His left eye twitched in irritation. He pretended to not be a sore loser, speaking in a measured tone.

“Yeah. It was really something. It would’ve been nice if I’d known about your ability before though? That shit kind of hurt.”

“I wanted it to be a surprise! And you were surprised!”

He rubbed his eyes in exasperation. He was glad he’d won, even if it was a win barely eked out by Nova herself. Being a good sport was so hard, huh?

“Well, I’ve got another surprise for you. We’re doing a six way 2v2v2v2v2v2 in a bit, since the Mark guy is all up in arms over my team winning. Maybe you’d wanna be my partner?”

A straightforward confession from left field. The ball is officially in her court now; will she return the serve?

“I don’t know about that… I’m not really a good team player. If the terrain isn’t good or they find me I won’t be very useful to you.”

A curveball that whizzed right by his face. But he raised his metaphorical racket and leapt with a mighty swing—

“I believe in your skills. I mean, I’ve got firsthand experience! Plus I’d rather work with you since I know you.”

“You’d have me?”

Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble. Don’t fumble.

“I mean, I’d love some company.”

Ohhhhh shit. She’s thinking, awkward confusion in her eyes. How does Marc roll on the persuasion check?

“I guess I could join you. Let’s do this!”

The clutch is literally so insane.

“Alright. I’m gonna go check on the others. I know some were hurt, so this is a good chance to maybe build some connections. Y’know, before we beat the shit out of them.”

“If you say so.”

Perhaps he could get to know his earlier teammates better… or talk to the enemy team.

While the obstacles and whatnot were slowly being rearranged, a construction agent assessed the damage to the gym, taking notes on a clipboard of the scope of the destruction.

“Do you want your quote in chits or dollars?”

“Not too keen about invitin’ feds to our doorstep.”

“Just a habit. You’d be surprised how many people trust the government to do shit for ‘em.”

Oarin wrung his hands uncomfortably as medics tended to the wounded from the battle.

“They ARE competent when they want to be. They’ll snap up any unaffiliated Empowered they think are worth nurturing. They just can’t afford to be everywhere at once. Last I heard, most of the military rotates through international operations.”

“Must suck to be the world’s policeman, huh?”

Marc awkwardly shuffled across the squeaky gym floors, avoiding all the spots where the ground was torn up and unstable. The spider mutant thing sat curled up on the ground, a medic attending to it with a strange plus shaped nail gun-esque device. A ka-chunk forced a thin metal rod into the carapace. Astonishingly, the bits of buckshot that pierced its body were suddenly ejected, spat out like gum. The wounds decorating its body began to slowly heal, new flesh visibly creeping forward over open gore.

“So… good game. You were pretty strong out there.”

The human half of the creature turned to look at him. It was an eerie sight, seeing what looked to be a nun’s torso appended to the back half of a massive arachnid’s cephalothorax. He couldn’t see her face very well due to the veil covering it. When she spoke, it carried tones of a church organ.

“I can feel it… you know. It hurt me when you shot the rest of me in the back.”

“Well, you know, it was all in good fun. I was just doing my best to win for my team.”

“Indeed. Perhaps next time I should eliminate you first. Always remove the greatest threat.”

“That’s cool, um, just wanted to get to know everyone a little better, since I’m sure you’ll be accepted with your strong showing of your abilities.”

“It’s nice to know you are at least that polite. You’d fit right in an intern, when I get my promotion.”

Rough. Talk about petty. And all he did was blast her ass with a shotgun! People are so ill-mannered these days.

“Thank you for the… vote of confidence. I’ll see you later. I guess.”

Widge sat anchored to the floor as multiple four-legged mechanical insects crawled over his body, burnishing smudged plating, shaping bent metal, and performing diagnostics on internal circuitry. Sparks fountained every time one of them began welding. Marc chose to approach with footsteps loud enough to hear coming but not so fast that it would alarm him.

“So… how goes solar panel prices, huh?”

He stared at Marc in an attempt to assess his brain damage. There was no evident signs of trauma written on his face; no sagging of the face to indicate a stroke, no slurring of words nor trouble walking. And yet, he could not shake the feeling that there was something seriously wrong with the man in front of him.

“I don’t use solar panels. I function primarily off of a miniaturized hyper-efficient radioisotope thermoelectric generator. I have no need for unreliable power sources that depend on outside circumstances.”

“Uhhh… how goes fiber optic cable prices?”

“Seen better days. WARP Corp has been having an unlucky streak with their recent hauls. Significant decrease in revenue as a result, and no materials for new cables. And there aren't exactly a lot of factories nowadays making new ones.”

“Yeah, I understand. I’m Marc, by the way. You’re Widge, right?”

“You heard it over the intercom, so yeah, it is. Should’ve crammed in a shield generator somewhere so I would’ve won that.”

“Where’re you from? I’m from out of town, but I’ve lived here so long it’s basically my real home now.”

“Inheritance. Rogue super. My family was part of the collateral damage. I spent what I got on augments since I was almost an adult anyways. Now I just bounce between jobs to pay the bills.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I’ll let you get back to, er, repairing yourself.”

Widge grunted in acknowledgement before entering some kind of sleep mode to save on processing power. While Marc went off to chat up the local Empowered in his area, Nova was messing with one of the gym’s terminals. A variety of flashing lights blinked at her touch, flashing between screens. After spamming all the buttons far too much, it autoreset back to the default welcome screen.

[PLEASE DO NOT OVERLOAD THE HOLOGRAPHIC PROJECTOR.]

[SELECT AN OPTION.]

Hesitantly, she tapped one of the side buttons. Ah, buttons. A relic of another time, when you couldn’t just tap the hologram to choose what you wanted. Even in its advanced age, it was still a useful resource for up to date publicly available information on the circumstances of the world ever since the world went to shit.

[SELECTED: The Rules of Empowerment.]

[Now playing Empowerment 101…]

Like most documentaries, it started off with stock footage. Scenes of metalworkers welding plates together transitioned to landscapes of crops being irrigated. Clips of planes flying through the air were interspersed with videos of pedestrians walking through the streets of another city. The camera took a moment to zoom in on a sign proudly standing tall above some buildings: PLAINSHOLD.

“So it’s time for the talk. Likely, your teacher is showing you this to get you up to speed on the mechanics of how Empowerments work.”

The voice was vaguely familiar, but Nova hadn’t formed a whole brain at the time of hearing it, so she struggled to connect the voice to the picture. The narrator droned on and on over slideshows of calm picturesque mountainscapes and then snapshots of multiple Empowered duking it out on city streets.

“In this brief educational preview, I’ll be describing the rules and regulations that Empowerment follows in order to— okay, this is taking too long, I’m doing this MY way.”

The peaceful photographic art show displayed on screen was interrupted by a large whiteboard being suddenly wheeled in front of everything, revealing it was, in fact, a green screen. An irritated scientist rapped his knuckles on it, a thin body of metal beneath a tight black turtleneck and similarly colored cargo pants. A gray lab coat didn’t hide the modified USB-C cable that sprouted from where his tailbone would be, and the jet black darkness of his sclera contrasted the shifting colors of his iris and inner ears. Not human ears, mind you, but a pair befitting a mouse. Scruffy gray hair nearly reaching down to his chin curved to frame the expression of exasperation on his face.

“Listen up, because I’m only saying this once. Replay the video if you care enough. Yes, it’s me, Pewter. No, not the news anchor; I am a researcher foremost.”

He snapped his fingers, and the whiteboard revealed itself to be far more advanced than initially shown. The green of his eyes and ears bled into an imperial purple as he struck the board with the tip of a pointer stick.

“The Rules of Activation. These fall into a few categories: passive, active, mixed, and miscellaneous.”

Four colored boxes delineated themselves on the board for each category.

“Passive and active explain themselves, you should be smart enough to get it. Mixed abilities are some combination of both, like a passive you can toggle, or an Empowerment encompassing multiple minor abilities all attached to a larger power. Miscellaneous is reserved for abilities with strange methods of use.”

The board morphs to show images of certain popular superheroes, vigilantes for whatever cities they lived in. A few villains appear as well, alongside celebrities or anyone of fame who happen to have Empowerments.

“Then there’s typing. Sponges take a lot of punishment, Speedsters are faster than normal, Sidesters run support, Tinkers fuck with tech, Elementalists manipulate an element, Coaxes mess with your mind, and Uniques have something that doesn’t fit anywhere else. There are more subclasses and such, like Magis, but I don’t have the time to tell you all those. I do not care enough.”

A pyramid arrayed itself on the screen, four levels to the top.

“Levels. No, not the game kind. Bigger level doesn't necessarily mean better, necessarily.”

The base of the pyramid lit up with white, a big zero emblazoned across the center.

“Level 0. Your ability can be used functionally without limit. Examples are the ability to sense all knives in an area, having eagle-eye vision, and being able to build up infinite kinetic energy.”

The next rung lit up with a yellow ONE clearly visible.

“Level 1. Your ability is not too different from a muscle. You can use it, you can flex it really hard if you need to, but you have to let it rest sometimes. Overuse tires it out, and can even hurt yourself. Magi types usually fall under this umbrella, as their mana functions not too dissimilarly to human stamina.”

The third rung was orange, with a big TWO.

“Level 2. Your ability has a major drawback of some kind. It may require some large sacrifice, paid by you or something else. Blood seems to be a not too uncommon price to pay for certain ritual adjacent Empowerments, but flesh, food, water, gold, and lives are all possible as well.”

The tip finally glowed with an ominous red light, denoted by a bright THREE.

“Level 3. Your ability is one-use. This level is very rare for people to reach, and more often than not they’re quite unwieldy powers. It’s not convenient for anyone to be a one-trick pony, but generally the one time they get to be in the spotlight they can really make an effort where it counts.”

The pyramid faded away, and Pewter waved his hand to show the cityscape of his home.

“Let’s assume you’ve just gotten your first Empowerment. Maybe you have, and that’s why you’re being shown this video. First thing you should be thinking is ‘how will this change my life’? I’ll tell you. It won’t; not at first.”

The camera switched to scenes of ballrooms, where hundreds of Empowered chatted with each other over news of all kinds. It was a whole alien world of decadence and luxury, effervescent ego bubbling under a lid of veneer, pomp, and circumstance.

“But eventually high society calls for you. Even if you’re just another member of the working class, do your best to attend these rare events every five years. Every city has one, and if you can get your foot in the door the connections could propel you to heights you might not even dream of.”

The ballroom faded away, a grassy hill in a meadow behind him instead.

“That’s the basics. Practice your Empowerment if you’ve got one, and don’t let it get to your head. Most of you are still one bullet away from passing away. Until next time, this is Pewter. Disconnect.”

The holographic went dark, switching back to the main screen. Nova found herself staring at the same buttons as before.

[PLEASE SELECT OPTION.]

Nova pressed the same button again, like a lobotomized walking corpse on life support, wholly incapable of independent thought and any level of critical thinking. The buzzing hologram reappeared, bright as ever, though without the previous video. This time, Pewter could be seen in some kind of laboratory, staring directly into the camera.

“You clicked the same button again. What terminal is this? Let’s see…”

He was rifling through binders just offscreen, flipping through directories while mumbling to himself.

“T-385, 386, 387… here it is. Commercial terminal 388. Sold to Catgirls Inc. Kids shouldn’t be playing with this machine. Where are your parents?”

Nova didn’t say anything, since all of his speech flew over her head. She just stood and stared, a creepy lifelike statue made out of purplish slime and star-flecked ooze. Pewter peered at her through the video connection.

“Wait a minute. You’re not a kid. Or are you? Is this some kind of Empowerment? A new species? Should you have a handler? Hello, is anyone nearby listening? You seem to have let your pet loose!”

Nova tried pressing other buttons, only for the machine to beep unhappily. NO ACTIONS CAN BE TAKEN AT THIS TIME, it said, in bright red text. There wasn’t even a back or escape button. Pewter buried his head in his hands.

“Whatever. I can’t do anything about it from all the way over here. Please don’t mess with my terminals and try using them properly.”

The display turned a worrying shade of monotone blue before zipping back to its original configuration on the main menu.

[PLEASE SELECT OPTION.]

“To be honest, you should’ve probably chosen this option first. It’s very likely you didn’t, as I’ve come to expect.”

Nova punched the button related to learning a new Empowerment, confused as to whether the robotic mouse person she saw on screen was the real version or a video. Pewter kept talking with no care for her confusion if that was true.

“The first step is always classifying what you have. It’s not uncommon for someone getting the hang of an Empowerment for the first time to accidentally sacrifice something important to them for the cosmic equivalent of an ice cream.”

In a large grassy field, flowers swayed with the wind as a breeze carried pollen over rolling hills. A gentle draft threaded its way through groves of trees, sprouting proudly wherever soil was fertile. Squirrels and rabbits peeked meekly from branches and burrows, eyeing the human in the midst of the meadow. At the center a single man stood, breathing in and out slowly. Pewter sat nearby, holding the camera as he lectured on and on.

“Choose a big, open area to discover your Empowerment. As few people around as possible. I’ve got a test subject here, willing, mind you, who just discovered they had an Empowerment.”

With careful and measured grace, the young man raised both hands in an outwards facing motion, as if pushing on an invisible wall. Pewter paused for a moment to appreciate the silence.

“A lot of people will only know they have an Empowerment when it shows up out of nowhere. Others have a glimmer of recognition in their minds before it happens, when they feel their inner self filled with strength unfamiliar. If you are the latter, it's best to try channeling your core.”

Pewter angled the camera at the back of his test subject, capturing every detail of the bright blades that coalesced around him. Swords, javelins, halberds, polearms, daggers, you name it, they popped into existence in midair. Each slowly hovered in place. With cautious optimism, the subject placed both palms pointing to the left and right, letting every conjured weapon orbit him at a plodding speed.

“Likely a level 1. It’s important you record the parameters of your ability in a safe space. Push yourself to your limits, see how far you can go. Like anything else, wielding an Empowerment is a matter of practice. Repeated usage can grow your proficiency, creativity, and stamina!”

The Empowered in question pointed a single finger, and a massive greatsword carved a great gash in the earth. Dirt and dust was flung from the wound in the ground at high speed, creating a brown cloud of particulates. Pewter waved a hand to keep the grime out of his face.

“It seems this one already has a handle on it. After understanding how best to make use of the gift you’ve been given, it's vital you decide what to do next with your life.”

Pewter tossed a little holoprojector on the ground, letting it unfold to its fullest extent. A flash of light revealed several 3D holograms of various people. A pair of mannequins chatted beneath a glimmering chandelier. Another one lunged forward at a hologram slinging magic missiles at it. Another still crossed plains and forests, snow and desert, in an eternal search for something unknown to the viewer.

“To be given an Empowerment is to be born anew. In the few cases that an elderly person is granted such a boon, their vitality is renewed, and their lives prolonged. Pardon the poetry, but to me, a contraption of wire and steel, I see benevolence. A blessed touch from beings unknown, to grant unto humanity the resolve to survive anything.”

The ballroom came into view again; just like the one from the other video! A woman in a beautiful dress snapped her fingers, creating a waterfall of wine to fill a glass. She toasted with her friend as many other holograms tangoed in the background.

“You might chase status. Fame and power runs the world, even now. To be gifted in this way means a ticket to the higher classes, to play the game that transcends language and people. A never-ending battlefield of social acumen.”

A hero thrust their sword skyward, and holy blades of light came down by the dozens upon the barriers of a resolute mage. Their staff glowed an unearthly light.

“Or perhaps you seek the thrill of battle. To use your ability to take from others, or to defend the weak from the strong. I won’t profess to you all my morals; I have at least that much respect for your intelligence.”

The scene of superhero vs villain faded away, to be replaced by an expansive landscape that stretched on and on. Biomes blended together into a rich tapestry of life and death. New ecosystems far removed from the Earth of a few decades ago flourished in the new status quo set by whoever shifted the rules of reality.

“There are always explorers. Much of the world lies in ruin, as I’ve seen firsthand. Ruined cityscapes sink into the mud. Empowerments touch nature, and new species rise accordingly to devour the remnants of the old world. Many search to document these new changes. Thousands of miles of land has returned to being unknown, unexplored. What might lie where humans once lived?”

Then that too disappeared. There was only the soft glint of white eyes in darkness to fill the screen. Pewter snapped his fingers, and the creepy projection collapsed to nothing. He spoke quietly, now, as the holoprojector reassembled into a portable boxy form to be carried away.

“And there’s the Dust. It’s not for the faint of heart. Most leave it to the Wall Collective to defend the cities of this continent from the creatures of night. Almost like nightmares made manifest. To go down this path is to fight for the fate of humanity. They are an enemy shrouded in fog, and I won’t even claim to know everything despite all the research I’ve conducted into the matter for over two dozen years.”

He stared directly at the screen now, the RGB lights of his inner ears and his irises burning a fiery yellow.

“If you want to help, then you just have to look. The battle against the Dust has no end. We will always be waiting.”

The terminal returned to its default state, blank and emotionless. Nova saw her reflection for a second while the screen loaded. She looked so… weird. Confused, even. A strange, slimy facsimile of humanity. She was pro-human now, as influenced by her soulbond with her master, but… she didn’t really have a purpose in life. Pewter offered her the decision to choose her own path in life. Where would she go?

Her train of thought snapped like a rubber band when Marc grabbed her hand and yanked her towards the gym’s center again.

“C’mon, Nova! We’ve got another round of tests to do. Just you, me, and Avalle! It’s like a date, but less hand-holding and more punching people in the face. Don’t worry about me, I feel fine. Surprisingly not tired after everything earlier, maybe because of [Soulbound]? Who knows.”

Marc tossed her the shotgun she’d bought, and she fumbled with it nervously in her slick hand-shaped appendages. So much information to take in. It was all so overwhelming again. The potential hirees all lined up again, and Oarin took the initiative to clap deafeningly loudly to get everyone’s attention.

“So you’re all back. I hope the medics did a good job patching you all up! Since the first round was a little controversial, we’re gonna have ourselves a second round. Six teams, two people on each team, flat ground. Last one standing wins! Everyone got that?”

The dozen of them limply raised their hands in a tired hurrah. Nova glanced around at the faces around her, set in their determination to be the winner of this battle royale. The remainder of them seemed to have already formed pairs. Who should she target first?

Naturally, the farmer and the veteran. A man who knows his way around a battlefield and an Empowerment to disrupt terrain would definitely prove to be a troublesome combo. Would Yiel fall for her tricks again? Maybe not. Not now that he knew how slippery she could be.

Circles on the ground lit up to indicate where to stand. Together, all twelve formed a sort of ring, contained within a massive bubble shield. Of course, there was no circle for Nova, so she just stood nervously behind Avalle to minimize the amount of people staring at her. It didn’t work, obviously, as she was the most interesting creature in the room. She poked Avalle in the shoulder to get her attention.

“Hm? What is it? I have to concentrate to really get my aim right, so don’t poke me during the battle.”

Nova pointed at the pair opposite to them. On the other side of the large circle, Yiel chatted with Mil, presumably about strategy. Nadal was crouching, resting on the balls of his feet, the doctor by his side. Ver sat beside Imacula while both clasped their hands together in some kind of meditative prayer. To the right, Widge tapped his feet and mimed a barrier spell until Stella understood. Finally, Mark Hastings was currently trying to find a spot where he could hang on to the spider queen’s abdomen in some kind of mounted formation.

“All forcefields online. I don’t have to tell you this, but do not exit the range of the arena. The projectors have a set range, and will likely fail if any of you manage to breach the arena borders. There won’t be any obstacles this time, just a big flat circle. Last team standing wins.”

Oarin raised one hand. The loudspeakers flared to life again in a countdown.

“Ten, nine, eight…”

Marc unfolded his ballistic shield, the hardlight blade mounted to his right arm sprouting from the projector. Stella was already mumbling in spellspeak, or whatever mages spoke when casting. Oarin didn’t step in to stop them, so everyone else joined in too.

“Seven, six, five…”

An imperceptible rumbling rocked the ground. Ver grimaced visibly as she lost ground to Yiel, who didn’t even break a sweat as he prepared to ruin the relatively intact circle everyone was standing in.

“Four, three, two…”

Widge transformed one arm into cannoneer mode, loading a grenade into the chamber. His legs tensed to jump at the same time Imacula lifted the arms of their robes.

“One…”

Oh. Nova remembered she should probably try and prepare something too.

She swung the barrel up as the first notes of a zero whispered into her ears. The click of pieces slotting into place, drowned out by the result of a trigger pull. The bang and the spray of pellets met no flesh, as Yiel dived to the ground while walls of dirt and stone rose around him. In seconds, earthen ramparts formed thick shields against small arms fire. Not all parts of the wall were created equal, though. Thin parts of the structure were chipped away to create little holes for a rifle’s barrel to peek through.

A burst rocked the ballistic shield Marc brought up in front of his face just in time. He fell to his knees and braced himself, but Mil was already retargeting. Imacula stumbled backwards while a flood of ants surged from the ground beneath, cutting off line of sight between them and the glint of a rifle’s scope aimed at him. The gun barked, and a volley of shots went wide. You could hardly tell anything had happened since the tide of insects closed up any gaps wrought by bullets in a second.

The human nun half of the spider queen clasped her hands together in prayer. As expected, she beelined for a prone Marc, still unhappy with her prior loss. Avalle wasted no time in whirling around to aim, noscoping Mark where he sat on her back. Those strange and ethereal blue arms sprouted from his back in a bid to intercept the bullet, only for it to punch a hole right through the hand of one and gut punch him right in the stomach.

It wasn’t a killing blow. And yet, the sudden and unexpected lapse in concentration meant that he couldn’t block all the buckshot meant for his face. Nova smiled (as best as a slime could) as the impact threw the man from where he sat.

“Mark Hastings is eliminated!”

The queen did not take kindly to the elimination of her teammate, and Marc had no room to breathe. It took all he could to block and deflect every strike from the sharp and powerful forelegs of the beast. Simultaneously, a spray of webbing yanked the large and cumbersome sniper rifle from Avalle’s hands. She quickly drew a backup laser pistol, but the heat of the beam was not as effective as she had hoped on the carapace. Marc’s only saving grace was the interruption of an explosive payload that sent him sprawling.

The spider queen seemed to expect it. She had avoided most of the damage, and now she glared upwards at Widge, who perched on a floating barrier beside Stella. From her wand a sparkling beam of burning sunlight scalded the skin. While not capable of piercing steel, the diffused heat of the light baked the black spider. It was not something she could stand for long, so she cast her webs up to Stella’s barriers in a familiar ploy to drag her down. Unlike before, Stella drew her discs of hardlight away from the battle in an attempt to make it harder to land clean shots.

Imacula let their robes loosen as dozens more eyeballs flowed outwards continuously from the safety of cloth. The swarm came down on Mil like rain, melting holes in the battlements he hid behind. There was little he could do but shoot them down one by one. Yiel kept repairing the mini-fort with more earth, forming a roof and multiple layers of fortifications to keep out all enemies. The whole time, Ver kept their teammate screened with bugs, preventing Mil from effectively retaliating.

Nova’s eyes flickered around for any targets to acquire. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted them; Nadal and Cotta bore down on Avalle, who was disarmed of her main and most deadly weapon. Without her intervention there was no way she’d survive the next five seconds.

Brown and black chitin overgrew Nova’s slimy surface, forming a tough barrier against physical attack. Nadal shifted his center of mass slightly, leaning out of the way of Nova’s charge forward. He kicked off of her torso and landed the backflip a distance away, well out of range of counterattack. Cotta likewise stopped short of her, noticing the spines now protruding from her carapace.

“A clever foe, indeed. But thou hast no haste greater than mine!”

Nadal could not be caught. Nova couldn’t chase after him with abandon, or else Cotta would get a free shot on Avalle. She did her best to help by burning away the clay body of her opponent, but it did little damage against the doctor’s prodigious mass and density. Instead, she turned it to Nadal, only for him to blur out of the way. His footwork was beyond human; he hovered over the ground, perfectly level. His movements must decry the laws of physics, for momentum did not apply to him. Acceleration he needed not. A fraction of a second was all it took to change directions.

“Just keep the doctor off me,” said Avalle, “and I’ll keep the Nadal guy at bay!”

It was a tenuous stalemate, one bound to collapse soon. A shame they could not tip the scales in their favor, as Marc still had his hands full. Yiel wisely kept to himself, choosing to turn his corner of the field into an impenetrable death trap. Mil did all the shooting, and it didn’t take long for a bullet to thread its way through the shields of light Stella had everywhere and strike Stella right in the stomach. It wasn’t a killing blow, but…

“Stella has been eliminated!”

The light barriers disappeared almost immediately, and Widge leapt away before the one he was standing on vanished as well. With no imminent opponent left to fight, the spider queen turned back to Marc. This time he’d make the first move.

His heels dug into the upturned earth, launching him forward out of the swing of a giant angry spider. Scything blades cut through the air he stood in a moment before. She scampered after him, murder on her mind, hot on his tail. Knees bent, he leapt into the air to avoid having his legs bisected. Before she could catch up and slice Marc in two, the wave of ants that surrounded Imacula and Ver split. They moved more sluggishly than before, perhaps due to the quantity of insects under the entomologist’s control.

Marc threw himself into the mess, fighting to break through. The spider queen, a much larger and greater threat by far, was not so lucky. The ants recognized a familiar enemy, and surged to bury the queen under a roiling mass of limbs and chitin.

When he broke through, he almost didn’t believe it. He coughed, scraping the guts of ants off his skin and praying he didn’t take any down his throat. Thankfully, at least one of them didn’t expect this outcome. Ver clearly seemed to be banking on holding back both of them with the ant wall, and her eyes widened at the glow of a hardlight blade mounted to Marc’s wrist.

Some of Imacula’s eyes came down in a flurry, trying to burn a hole through the intruder’s body. Marc dove forward out of the way of one, leaning out of the way of another, and tackling the entomologist as she backpedaled away in terror. But rather than striking for the throat right then, he hauled her up, keeping the blade by her neck as he turned to face the cultist.

“Cool your jets, Imacula. I think it’d be better for everyone if you helped get this spider queen nun off me.”

“FOUL. YOU WOULD HOLD OTHERS HOSTAGE FOR YOUR OWN ENDS?”

“It doesn’t have to be that way. You can change it.”

He nodded to the queen, slowly clawing her way out of Ver’s entrapment. Imacula clasped their robes together in frustrated acceptance.

“FINE. I HOPE YOU DO NOT REGRET YOUR DECISION.”

The many eyes under their command turned their attention to the massive foe, though not a second too soon. A grenade blew apart the stone walls of one side of Yiel’s battlements. Mil had barely any time to turn his barrel from the eyeballs flying away to the blur that was Widge, circling around his position to bombard him from angles outside his field of view. It was a dangerous game of cat and mouse. Exposed for a second, a single explosive would put Mil out of the fight. And yet, the battlements screened his movements, making it difficult for Widge to nail a shot, and even harder to predict from where he would shoot next.

The queen flailed, throwing off the last of the biting and stinging pain on her with little actual injury. Though they were many, only her human half was hurt, red marks all over her body. The carapace of the main body meant little real change was affected. No sooner had she torn free of her imprisonment did a new kind befall her: lasers. From eyeballs. It was a cage of heat and flame, beaming down to scorch the earth itself. She webbed them down as fast as she could, but others were trying to melt through her webs as well. It was a battle of attrition. Only time would pick a winner.

There was no time to gloat. Marc could see the trouble his teammates were in. Cotta did his best to occupy Nova’s attention, and Nadal crept ever closer, weaving between laser pistol shots. Avalle’s hands trembled with adrenaline, and he could tell that the only loser of a battle of attrition would be his team. But what could he do with a woman held hostage in his arms?

The answer was obvious. In a flash, he ripped the blade across her throat, the glimmering iridescence of a forcefield flaring to life to clash against the hardlight.

“Ver has been eliminated!”

By the time Imacula turned to see what had happened, Marc had already zipped away, leaving the trembling, limp body of the entomologist behind. The bugs under her control lost cohesion like a wave breaking upon a shore, and then Imacula had no more protection to rely upon. He heard the scuttling a moment before the spider queen was upon him, and the minders running the battle did not need to see the results of a single strike to know that there was no way they wouldn’t be gravely injured.

“Imacula has been eliminated!”

The shockwave of an explosion nearly threw Marc off balance, but he kept running. Legs pumping, he leapt for a flying tackle, to hopefully tilt the tides in his favor. And yet, Nadal sensed him coming. Was it the slight widening of Avalle’s eyes? Could it have been the subtle draft created by his approach? Regardless, Nadal dashed out of the way, turning on a dime to nearly spear Marc through the side with his rapier. Only the reflexive upturn of his ballistic shield saved him. The tip of the blade screeched terribly as it slid off the smooth surface of the buckler, leaving a small gash.

Another momentary stalemate. Nadal could stall against both him and Avalle, no doubt. Nova could keep Cotta off their backs, but Widge continued his skirmish against the last remaining team. In the distance Marc could see him climbing the dirt and stone structure Yiel had erected, and the burning gaze of the spider queen, now with no one left to fight. Once more she turned her eyes to him; what a dirty targetter. Truthfully, was there really anything left he could do? Fending her off alone meant Nadal could easily dismantle his team.

The most he could hope for was disengaging and regrouping elsewhere. Without a major change in their situation, they would quickly crumble under the weight of both teams currently on their ass. A strange vigor filled his muscles, and with a burst of speed he dashed away from the blades that sought his flesh, grabbing Nova’s hand and hauling her along with him. She gurgled in surprise but let him yank her away.

“Let’s go! WE’RE BOOKING IT!”

Avalle let off a few more shots with the laser pistol before starting to run away, hoping it would buy her a little more time. Nadal danced between the beams, a ballet dancer of battle. He squinted as she fled, but backed away, allowing the large form of the spider queen to scramble past him. She paid no attention to the other team, having tunnel visioned on her target. Nadal was content to follow behind her. Cotta stood there, left in the dust, looking around confused. Now what?

Widge turned around from where he crouched on top of Yiel’s minifort and lobbed a grenade at the oncoming group, only for a well placed laser shot to pierce it, throwing up dust and debris in an explosion that the trio had to run through anyway. The terrain quickly grew uneven and covered in spikes oriented outwards in an attempt to stop anyone from approaching, and Marc found himself struggling to navigate the territory Yiel had taken control over.

And that was still much luckier than Avalle, who had the joy of a nice shot wiped away by the hailstorm of rifle caliber that saturated her location. She never stood a chance. The last thing she saw before she fell was a thin barrel poking out of a little slit in the battlements.

“Avalle has been eliminated!”

A rock and a hard place, huh? Marc dove for safety as another grenade arced over his head, the spider queen slicing it in two with a deft slash of one arm. The shockwave rolled over him as he lay on the ground, and he could hear the loudspeaker blaring while he came to his senses.

“Arachnee has been eliminated!”

That was her name? A bit on the nose, wasn’t it? The laugh building in his throat was swiftly silenced by the tip of a titanium rapier kissing his throat. His eyes flit upwards to see the cheery, ever positive smile Nadal always wore on his face.

“A noble effort indeed! But how the round tables turn, hmm?”

A silver flash zipped across his vision, and Marc slipped into unconsciousness. His eyes closed, and his mind was given a deserved rest.

In a different place, the silhouette of a figure sat in a dark room, watching the cameras set up all throughout the gym. All at once, they soaked in every display of every impressive feat of every Empowerment taking place during the candidate testing process. In silence their eyes flickered between every screen, until the door opened behind them and let light wash through the security room.

“Any of them catch your interest?”

It was the HR employee that Marc spoke with an hour or two earlier. She fingered her clipboard nervously, on edge as the figure turned around in their chair slowly to respond.

“Acceptable. Once again you prove your competence.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“But I am disappointed. I do not think any meet our objective.”

“I apologize. Theoretically it may be possible, but in practice no one seems to have the specific Empowerment we would need to execute Operation Christ.”

The catwoman breathed a sigh of relief as they turned away to watch the screens again. Briefly, they caught sight of Nova, dodging Nadal’s aggressive advance as she let his rapier glance off her beetle shell. Quick as a snake, she melted back into a more viscous form to squirm through the cracks in Yiel’s battlements, much to Mil’s surprise.

For a split second, the finger of higher beings reaches out to move a piece they should have never been able to. Thus, they may decide the action of a figure, unseen.

Strangely, the figure felt… almost compelled to raise their voice again.

“That one. Is that… a slime?”

“It seems so. But its intelligence is much higher than any slime should, even accounting for beastmaster Empowerments.”

“Then it must be Empowered itself. That’s the only way non-humans can gain anything close to sentience.”

“But beastmaster types can’t tame Empowered animals. What few tamers exist have already tried…”

“I am aware. The natural resistance all Empowered have to negative effects. Improved regeneration, a sturdier constitution, and a mind far harder to violate. But you cannot deny the results.”

They watched as the battle wound down, the winner emerging victorious among all others. The HR employee stood there awkwardly, unsure of what to do during the silence.

“Chee, put this slime and her handler on the interest list. When I have time, I’ll speak to them personally.”

“Of course, manager.”

She scurried away out of sight, and the hidden figure smiled a little as they focused on the cameras within the gym.

For a moment, there is darkness. Then your vision fills again, and you’re staring down at slimy purple hands speckled with a million stars.

YOU - ARE - NOVA

She sat up from where she lay on the ground, taken out of the battle. To her right, Mil was still collapsed where she had eliminated him earlier via asphyxiation; it was all too easy to glomp anyone within melee range and choke them out. This strategy didn’t do so well against Cotta, whose clay body followed quickly in her footsteps. While her acid did much to slowly eat away at his earthen core, she was never given the chance to finish him off. She could still feel the titanium rapier flashing through her body, frozen a centimeter from the human brain she carried around in her head.

Yiel had met much the same fate. Thus, Cotta (but mostly Nadal) were deemed the winners of Round 2. Nova tried to resuscitate Marc by slapping him in the face with a slimy hand, but he really was conked out after all that fighting. A distance away, Oarin was breaking apart the dirt and stone Yiel had shaped into a fort with his bare hands, fists crushing soil and rock. Avalle sat some distance away, obsessively checking and cleaning her sniper rifle to make sure it had sustained no damage when it was tossed away earlier.

The other applicants who had not participated in the fight could be seen lounging around, chatting amicably with each other while they waited for what came next. Nova easily spotted Suvert, who had most of the people gathered around him while he spoke of the ups and downs of the mercenary life and how to navigate the perils of freelancing. His eyes glanced up to meet hers, and he wasted no time in waving away the posse he’d formed to stroll over to her.

“Good job out there, Nova. Is, uh, your owner okay?”

Nova poked Marc in the cheek. No response.

“Yyyyesssss.”

“I see. Well, it’d be best if you moved him to the stands by the wall so no one steps or trips over him.”

With a little concentration, her body snapped to attention, the oozing fluid compacting into a near-solid with enough surface tension to resist blunt impact. In this way, it was a lot easier for her to lift Marc (despite her small stature) and carry him in both arms to the side. Suvert looked thoughtful as he noted the way her lower half went from a goopy pillar with barely discernible thighs to a pair of legs indistinguishable from a human. Too human, for a monster that was best known for being a garden pest.

“How do you do that, exactly?”

“Mmm? Dueee wha?”

“That thing where you go from liquid to solid. I thought slimes had no solid part, besides a core.”

Nova prodded one leg and considered the startling likeness with which her body compressed like human flesh.

“Dunno. I think hard an’ it happen.”

Suvert supposed he shouldn’t judge Nova by the standard of other slimes. Most of them didn’t possess what looked like a human brain for a core, though it was hard to tell through the opaqueness of her slime. He was absolutely sure none of them had a pair of eyes, either.

“Understandable. Well, now that your exam is over, they’re probably gonna decide if you two get hired. And us, too. How are you feeling? Any questions about anything?”

“How do aii… bee mo’ hooman? Laike massssterrr…”

“Well, you have to work on your speech first. Solidify your mouth as much as possible, and practice talking.”

Suvert brought up an old video on his personal tablet of someone showing foreign learners how to pronounce words in English. The woman in the video took great care in emphasizing every syllable, enunciating it step by step with diagrams of how to make the right sounds in her mouth. Frankly, it was very boring. But to a fusion of human and slime like Nova, it was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen. Curiously, she stuck her fingers into her own mouth, trying to match up to the woman on the screen. It made no sense, especially since her hand and mouth were the exact same part of her body, being that she had no real body parts. It was all slime shaped in different ways.

“Tha… the quick bwown fox jump over the lasy dog.”

“It’s an improvement. Just keep at it whenever you don’t have anything else to do.”

She reached out to grab his tablet but he didn’t budge.

“This is mine, by the way. If you want to study you’re going to need your own. Or ask your master or whatever to search it up on his device.”

She slumped in her seat, which was more like half-melting into a viscous ball of goo on the wooden benches.

“But besides that, you’re probably going to want to try mimicking people more. Try to stay solid for longer. The more solid, the better. Make sure to study human anatomy so you can more closely shape yourself to look human. Get all the little details. And maybe consider wearing clothes. Right now that’s not an issue, since you’re usually a pillar of goo, but if you’re going to try for the human look, you can’t really walk around naked.”

Wow that was a lot of information she would definitely end up sitting around and processing later. She perked up reflexively when Oarin clapped his hands again. By now, everyone knew to gather around when he did that, except for Marc, who was still unconscious. At least she could go solid mode and carry him on her back, which drew some weird looks from a few employees, but ultimately no complaints.

“Good job, everyone! We’ve already sent out emails of acceptance to all our non-combatant members, but I figure I might as well give the rest of them in person. When I call out your name, step forward.”

Nova watched as one by one most of the people gathered stepped forward. If order meant anything, Arachnee was first, despite her poor showings. Then Avalle, Imacula, Nadal, Mil, Yiel, and Stella. Evidently, Widge’s lacking usage of his resources placed him too low to be accepted. Mark didn’t make a great impression on Oarin, either. Ver breathed a sigh of relief as she was called up. Lastly…

“Marc, congratulations!”

Nova stood there, unaware for a moment before the stares of everyone else reminded her that Marc was totally conked out. Unsure of what to do, she stepped up for him instead.

“And that concludes this round of hires. Apologies to everyone who didn’t qualify, there’s always next time. The exit is out behind the ball pit. All of you who did make it, come with me.”

Both failed combatants grumbled as they departed, followed by more than a few of the non-combatants. Catgirls Inc must have needed fighters more than internal accountants. Suvert made it through somehow, probably riding on his natural charisma no doubt. Nova trailed behind everyone else as they all went to a different part of the building, her trusty shotgun floating in the center of her chest.

Now, here was the cafeteria. It was a spacious place, with a plethora of employees on break eating and chatting about their daily lives. Nova felt a little overwhelmed by all the hustle. Over by the serving aisle, she could see various men and women and others tapping their watches against a screen to pay for their food, which she vaguely remembered from what scarce fragments of memory the person she ate had floating around. Suvert tapped her on the shoulder.

“You probably don’t have one of those. Marc does, though, so you can use that. If he doesn’t have any chits or it doesn’t work, I’ll pay. Just put it on his tab.”

She was practically wide-eyed at the huge range of options at the buffet. Crab, squid, octopus, salmon, trout, beef, pork, chicken, turkey… What an amazing array of meats and seafood to try! She didn’t even understand most of the names, simply drawing the names from broken memories. Then there were the vegetables. She was definitely more than a little greedy as she piled food onto her plate(s) with the ease of muscle memory she never trained herself.

Oarin observed her stacking a ludicrous amount of the cafeteria’s allotted nutrition on her plates. All the other applicants that were accepted seemed to eat more or less a reasonable amount in proportion to their abilities, and it was around lunchtime, so it should have been a pretty accurate baseline as to how much food each one of them needed. Nova, though… It seemed a little much. He opened his mouth to object at the same time his phone rang in his pocket. His face contorted in confusion, and then acceptance as he spoke with someone else on call. A minute later, he ended the call, put the phone away, and casually strode over to the chefs responsible for running the cafeteria.

“Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but I’d like to ask you to waive the meal fee for Nova, over here. I’ve got permission from up top.”

One of the catladies adjusted the hairnet over her gray-furred ears, ladling soup from a pot.

“If you say so, Oarin.”

He drew up behind Nova as she reconstructed the Leaning Tower of Pisa (at least, from when it was still standing) in the form of food,

“Hey, Nova. Eat to your heart’s content. Everything is on me today.”

Nova couldn’t really smile, as her mouth didn’t really exist when it was closed. But the rest of her face, and her eyes especially, betrayed her joy.

“By the way, while you’re free… I’ve got something to ask you.”

Her gaze turned quizzical as he listed his demands.

“One of my bosses wants to speak to you. I guess you’ve turned a few heads. I’m not sure what they want, exactly… if it’s fine with you, I could take you there after lunch.”

“Ummm… I wait. Until massster ess awake.”

“Hm. That should be fine. When he wakes up, make sure to tell him.”

So Oarin left, thank god. Now she could get back to what she really wanted to do, which was stuff herself silly with enough food to feed a hundred men. Even better than the nutritional quality was the variety of biological designs she would learn. It was always incredibly interesting to be able to analyze the muscle quality of various creatures to determine how best to use it in combat. While she wouldn’t be able to transform back to slime quickly due to having to break down the muscle afterwards, being able to apply more force at the right time with optimized musculature would be invaluable in the coming weeks.

She placed her city’s worth of food on a nearby table that was empty, attracting the awe of a dumbfounded Suvert.

“I don’t think Marc or I could pay for all that.”

“He, him pay. For it.”

She gestured to the bearman standing in the corner, phone to his ear as he tried to sort things out with his supervisor.

“Well, lucky you then. How are you going to eat all this?”

Nova picked up a solid slab of salmon, like an entire fish, and tried shoving it in her mouth. Of course, she was human sized, and thus far too small to fit an entire fish down her throat. Rather than simply breaking the physical limits of a human and swallowing things in a single bite, she remembered that to become more human she had to act the part. Thus, she simply digested it directly. Her cells churned to produce increasingly more corrosive acid to melt everything with mediocre efficiency, but she didn’t care. Efficiency was hardly an issue when she had swamped herself with input.

As the pinkish meat quickly dissolved in what passed for a mouth, her subconscious absorbed the knowledge, the very DNA of how its scales were constructed. How fat was stored, how to grow out a nervous system, and various other cell tasks that were similar to the human she’d eaten. Overall, she learned very little, but even a minor improvement would be enough to improve her physique when it counted. It was still slow eating compared to how much she needed to burn through, but there was no time limit. Other than the potential irritation of the employees, of course, who couldn’t keep their eyes off of the slime woman with a random guy on her back devouring as much food as almost everyone else combined.

She got so engrossed in the bliss of simply eating that she didn’t notice the person that came up to her to talk. Avalle had to peek around from the other side of the Sustenance Pile to see Nova face to face.

“Can I sit here? There’s a lot of space here, so maybe some of us could take some spots.”

“Friend. Only.”

“Well, that’s alright. Excuse me…”

Avalle slid into the seat on the other side of the table, hoping the tower wouldn’t collapse and crush her under its weight. Nova peered at the relatively small tray, laden with toast, eggs, sausage, soup, and a small salad. Much too little, she thought. How could anyone else survive on such little food? Humans were so stupid…

She ate in big bites as others ended up filing to her table, the heathens. Don’t they know this is her table? They should show their respect to her. Deference, even.

Imacula sat down with a tray of like six burritos. Nova vaguely understood that it was a wrap with edible things inside, but it didn’t look appealing to her. She didn’t really understand why the cultist needed six until they picked one up, the thing half-visible due to the long robes, and shoved it into the darkness under their hood. Nothing came out. It scared her a little. A true predator, that one.

Nadal jabbed her in the back before she could notice him and she nearly slapped him with a solidified hand, only for him to jump back out of range.

“I return, my dear! Did you enjoy our brief spat? Such a thrill to speak with blade and fist, is it not?”

She refused to look at him, still smoldering from her loss. No matter how solid she could get, it didn’t stop the tip of a rapier from piercing her face to scramble her brain. Thankfully the forcefield kicked into gear in time to prevent that, but she had come perilously close to losing it. She was not very keen on seeing what would happen if her brain was destroyed. Likely it would result in her total regression to animalistic instinct.

“Ah, but no bad blood between the two of us, compadre? We may hath many more opportunities to work together. Forsooth!”

Nova struggled to properly express her frustration with him. While she had the blueprints of an adult human brain squirreled away in her subconscious, most of the neural connections had been lost. If it were not for their [Soulbound] bond, she would have struggled much more with the very basics of being human. So when she acted, it was a mix of toddler-level maturity mixed with the quintessential sign of displeasure all humans understood.

Nadal’s earnest smile faltered when Nova flipped him the bird. Perhaps some of Marc’s innermost evil had rubbed off on her, and she was slowly turning into a sassy bitch who took no shit.

“I see. I suppose I won’t bother you any further, madam. Good day to you.”

He shuffled away to sit somewhere else, and Nova almost felt guilty at being so mean to him. Maybe he wasn’t rubbing in the victory after all.

Nadal will remember that.

Stella did not even bother asking. She just plopped herself down right next to Nova without a care in the world, pointing and asking questions.

“Hey! We were teammates in round one, remember that? What’s with the food tower? Is your owner okay? Where do you think we’re gonna get to work? I’ve never done this before, is working hard?”

A fierce opening that left you with no room to breathe. A normal person might be overwhelmed by such a volume of inquiries, but Nova was no stranger to inconsiderately ignoring things she didn’t like. She briefly considered giving her the middle finger as well, but she remembered Nadal’s face and how weird he looked when he scampered away, and decided it was best not to. However, she was somewhat interested in Stella’s wand, which hung by her waist like a gun-owner’s open carry. It was a thick, jet-black handle, with a clipart-style star attached to the top of it, made of a material she didn’t recognize.

She wanted to hold it again, as if it called to her. She vaguely understood she needed to get Marc awake again, if not for the lunch hour he would miss, but the need to give Oarin some kind of answer. So she slapped him. Not a soft slap, or a normal slap that you might expect from someone holding back. Nova was entirely solid, maybe even a little more than normal, in accordance with Suvert’s advice. And with the excessive amount of food she had already packed down (at least a third of the tower), her internal density was reaching a limit and she was forced to begin scaling up her proportions to maintain a normal human shape.

So no, she didn’t give him a light smack across the cheek with the weight of a 4’11 petite woman like she would’ve previously. Instead, it was the world-destroying slap a six foot body-builder might send you sprawling with if you told her she was looking a little flabby.

It was a slap to redefine slaps. Stella’s excited enthusiasm was frozen in shock watching Nova baptize her owner with enough pain to make her flinch, despite not being the recipient. And oh, god, the sound. Nova WAS almost six feet by now, and even though she had the size of a normal woman, the density of slime is much greater than that of human flesh.

SMACK

The shockwave reverberates throughout the room. It creates the briefest of lulls, where everyone simultaneously stops in their tracks to see the source of the sound. It’s an awkward two seconds of silence before everyone gets back to what they were doing (for the most part), keeping Nova in the corner of their vision.

But it works! Marc is awake, and also on the ground, writhing from the misery he just went through. He was almost sure his jaw was dislocated from the meteoric impact.

“Ow, fuck, what the hell?”

“Him. He ask something.”

Nova pointed to Oarin, who was explaining to whoever was on the other end of the call why he was unable to fulfill their request immediately. Marc massaged his chin and threw a glance over to him.

“Not right now. I’m feeling hungry. Oh, you already predicted that I guess. Jesus, how’d you get this much???”

“He pay for it.”

“I’ll talk to him later. Ugh. I’m gonna eat now, though. Or try to.”

Surprisingly, the pain abated a lot quicker than he expected, and he felt a strange ravenous hunger unlike anything he’d ever felt before compelling him to dig in. And dig in, he did. Avalle eyed him warily as he stuffed a taco, a burrito, a handful of spring rolls, a steak… he was still going. It was more than a tiny bit weird to her. But Marc was too blissful to notice. He was having the time of his life devouring an entire five course meal’s worth of calories. Surely he didn’t have enough space to fit it all, but he didn’t care. Even better, he didn’t feel very tired at all. All the exertion of two rounds of fighting left him with negligible fatigue and a great appetite.

When he had finished gorging himself on the feast arrayed before him, Marc stood up with a huff. He felt… heavier. His body didn’t show it, but he had really packed in the pounds. Begrudgingly, he strolled over to where Oarin was having an argument on the phone.

“Oarin? You wanted to ask me something?”

The bearman hastily whispered something into the cell phone before covering it with one hand.

“Oh, yes, Marc, I was gonna ask you: my boss wants to see you for something. Could you come with me?”

“Why would I do that?”

Oarin stopped at that. He really didn’t expect a no. Who could turn down a potential promotion?

“Uh… they might want to have a talk with you about something.”

“Is it a required meeting? Am I being promoted?”

“I wasn’t told anything. You’ll have to find out for yourself.”

“Then I don’t feel like going. I’d rather just get through orientation here and go home and rest. We’ve fought twice going through the interview process already. If they want to meet me so much, they should come to me.”

Marc turned on a dime and power walked away, feeling more powerful after turning down an offer from someone of higher stature than him. For once in his life, he got to feel like the important one.

At this time, people were beginning to file out of the cafeteria as the lunch rush passed. More than one of the chefs appeared fearful, creeped out watching Nova finish off the rest of her plates. She was clearly sizably bigger and taller, and it worried them what would happen if Nova were allowed unfettered access to the whole buffet. A giant slime woman did not sound like a good customer to have.

Just then, the door to the canteen swung wide open, revealing a catgirl of white hair and fur, dressed in a black suit and panting. Almost immediately her eyes locked onto her target from across the room. When Oarin turned around, she was standing right in front of him, an accusing finger in his face.

“YOU were supposed to have them at orientation half an HOUR ago! What the hell have you been doing?!”

“Chill for a second, I was dealing with the boss. Also, it’s lunchtime, so they deserve to eat before anything else.”

“Then just have them eat while in intake! I shouldn’t have to be here right now, I’m supposed to be getting a potential case dismissed. I don’t want to have to come all the way here again. Capiche?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. They’re about done anyways, take them and go.”

She sighed in frustration before gesturing for a few of them to follow her.

“Marc, Avalle, Yiel, Imacula. Come with me. The rest of you too, you’re being assigned to other departments,” she said, with a tone that left no room for games or bullshit.

They all filed out of the cafeteria one by one, down hallways and past large windows that provided a view to the rest of the city. Some gave Nova weird looks as she walked past, but she didn’t notice or care. Marc was instead focused on the back of the catgirl sent to collect them, noticing her tail assumed a fixed position. It barely swayed. The click of her loafer’s heels sounded in his ears while he thought of something to say.

“Who are you, exactly? I wasn’t given a pamphlet or anything…”

The lady didn’t bother turning around to speak face to face. She just kept trudging on, tapping on a tablet with half her attention focused on not tripping.

“I’m Nita. The assigned lawyer for the Seaside Pacifiers division. Some of you are going to be joining us to fill out the roster. The higher ups have been interested in creating a solver squad to send out on short notice missions; one more elite than the normal peacekeeping force.”

Nita snapped her fingers at the same time as a minder scurried around the corner, a small dogboy of brown fur with a tray of ID cards.

“Ruv, good timing. I was just going to bring the new hires over for orientation. All of you, whose names I didn’t call, please pick up your new IDs from Ruv and follow him to where you’ll be briefed on your new responsibilities.”

“Oh, thanks, Nita! I’ll have them caught up and ready to deploy in a jiffy! Let’s go, everyone!”

There was some uncertain mumbling in response to the ID card giveaway. Suvert grabbed his and squinted at his image on the plastic.

“Ooh, lookin’ good.”

Stella looked at hers. It was a hastily taken capture of her face from a distance away with a long-range lens, photographed while she had been napping on a bench between rounds during the interview.

“What… what the hell…”

Strangely, Marc, Avalle, Yiel, and Imacula did not receive anything similar. Marc popped the question he’d been meaning to ask the whole time, watching all the people he’d met filing away to wherever they needed to be. It was just him, Nita, the other three hirees, and Nova, messing around with the shotgun she was still carrying around.

“So… how’re the job benefits?”

Nita slapped him in the head with a sheaf of papers, causing him to stumble as she walked onward.

“Good enough. Do well and six figures isn’t out of the question. Oh, and members are offered free healthcare. Promotions can earn free gene therapy treatments or modifications as well.”

That made enough sense to him. Catgirls Inc. was, technically, foremost a biotech company. Despite the fan-service type branding, they were terribly effective at improving the human genome and patching up fatal wounds. They were even involved in the creation of the civilian nanite pen he’d purchased from the Mercenary Guild’s armory.

Nita led the group to a small elevator, situated at the end of a long hallway lined with conference halls, break rooms, and high-class office spaces. It was an awkward ride. Everyone tried their hardest not to look at anything but the wall, and when Nova got curious and tried pressing all the buttons Nita had to slap her hand away. For the rest of the agonizingly long ascension, Nova stood in the corner and stared at the carpeted floor of the little cabin.

Ding! The elevator has reached its destination.

The door opened, revealing what was probably the best office space Marc had ever seen. It wasn’t too large, nor too small. Dark oak lined the walls down to the soft carpet floor, and a few heavy wooden bookshelves framed a holographic television on the right wall. The left wall had a premium couch with quite a few throw pillows, with more than one island sofa connected to it. Directly in front was a massive cherry wood desk, good enough for even the most vain of CEOs. Behind the desk was no far wall, but a massive window, one that gave an uninterrupted view of the city’s central street. It drew a line from the HQ, past skyscrapers and residential flats all the way to the beach in the distance.

Unfortunately for him, Marc had no time to admire it. In the velvety chair behind the desk rested an anthropomorphized Shiba Inu, reclining against the headrest. Bark-colored fur with light beige undertones covered his entire body, unlike most of the other employees at the company; it was a furry come to life. On the aforementioned couch lay a seven foot monstrosity of a woman, with blood-red hair that fell to the knees and a body built like a stack of bricks. Tattoos dotted some parts of her body, noticeably the face, arms, and one leg.

It’s time… for Marc to show them the irresistible Marccenary charizzma.

“What’s up, star of the show comin’ through!”

Marc strolled into the decked out office suite as if he owned the place, much to the irritation and chagrin of everyone else. Nova did not pick up on the social faux pas and stared blithely at the new folk. The Shiba Inu buried his head in his hands (paws?), grumbling to himself.

“Nita, I asked for competent hires.”

“They are competent! Just a little strange. I’m sure you two can whip these guys into shape in no time!”

“I’m already the one doing most of the paperwork. Do I get paid extra?”

“You get paid in the shits I’m willing to give every time I see your sorry ass in the police station, Alex.”

That shut the dog up real quick. The woman on the couch covered her mouth in pretend shock.

“Ooh, she cooked you real bad with that one.”

“Respectfully, Aliza, shut the fuck up, I had to drag your half-corpse offsite. I’m not the one with infinite revives and I still ended up better off than you.”

Aliza flashed her wrists, and the strange symbolic tattoo there slithered up her skin and to the tips of her fingers, extending her nails with what appeared to be glowing blue talons. They didn’t look solid at all, but their presence gave off an aura of danger that kept everyone on alert.

“Because I can afford to. You can’t say the same, especially if I hit you with one of these.”

Nita grabbed Marc by the arm and shoved him forward to turn the attention back onto him, taking the initiative to begin introductions.

“Okay you two, that’s enough. Say hi to the newbies. This is Marc, his Empowerment is listed as [Soulbound] in the database. That’s why he has this… thing, with him at all times.”

Nita jabbed a thumb at Nova, who did her best impression of being a lamp in the corner: still and inoffensive. Avalle stepped up to be the first one to volunteer to be introduced.

“I’m Avalle, and I use a sniper. [Projectile Motion] lets me see the trajectory of anything, so I don’t need a spotter to help me aim.”

“Ehhh… my name is Yiel. I’m from outta town, few dozen miles east o’ here, an’ I came ‘ere to find more lucrative work. Fightin’ off them Dusts for a shitty harvest ain’t worth the pennies. I got [Field Day]; I can shape the ground anywhere I go.”

“YOU MAY REFER TO ME AS IMACULA. [FALSE OMNISCIENCE] ALLOWS ME TO PRODUCE MANY EYES THROUGH WHICH I CAN SEE THROUGH AND ATTACK WITH.”

Nita clapped her gloved hands together, turning to leave via the elevator.

“Good! Now that you all know each other’s names, why don’t you make yourselves comfortable? Alex and Aliza will explain to you the basics of what you need to do, and then you can work the rest of the shift, until about 8 PM. I’ve got work to do, so I’m off.”

The elevator door closed behind her, and then Marc was left in an awkward silence he would have to break.

“How’s the company been treating you guys? We’re new hires, don’t know a lot about the internal situation.”

Alex eyed him warily, scratching at his fur in irritation.

“A weird question to ask. Not even a day here and you’re already looking under the table?”

“I wouldn’t normally, but the last corporation I was a part of almost killed me. So I think a little caution is warranted.”

Aliza sat up straighter in her seat at the mention of drama. Anything to make a boring day more interesting, she thought.

“A mysterious past or something like that? We really don’t go on missions too often, feel free to yap about it all you want.

“It’s nothing that complicated. I just dug a little too deep at my time over at Automotive Industries, and you know how they feel about—”

Alex was upon him in a moment, his paws on Marc’s shirt. The claws dug into the fabric, choking him slightly, and Alex’s baleful glare pricked him right in the heart. His tone was acrid, practically dripping with venom.

“Who let you past interviews? Do you know what we do to spies?”

Aliza had to grab his arm and pull him away to quell his anger.

“Sorry about him. What were you going to say?”

“My employers terminated my contract. And they were going to terminate me, too. I got away, and I work for the Mercenary’s Union now, but they might come after me anyway.”

“Really? Most of their leaks end up six feet under. How’d you get away by yourself?”

It would be for the better to not mention the Tracker to her. He seemed to like his privacy; why else would he live all alone in the woods?

“You could say she played some part in it. Both in putting me six feet under and pulling me out of it.”

Marc pointed to Nova, who was attempting to read one of the books. She pointed to herself with one hand in confusion.

“All hearsay,” growled Alex. “How am I supposed to believe you with no evidence? It’s ridiculous that you got past HR without proving yourself. Untrustworthy.”

“What’s your beef with A.I, man? I know I’ve got reason to hate their guts, since they tried to silence me or whatever, but I never heard anything about you during my time in the company.”

“Why would you? They’d never tell their lackeys about the shit they do behind the scenes.”

Alex pulled away from Aliza who just let him go. A simmering anger boiled under his fur as he sat down in his velvet office chair.

“Have you ever been an inch away from a robot’s blade, Marc? A finger’s distance between life and death?”

“Yeah, I mean, I almost died to one.”

“How about a hundred times? That’s me.”

Alex swiveled around in his chair to look out the window.

“And that goes for a lot of us here at Catgirls Inc. They aren’t just content with the status quo. They’ll do anything to grow. Expand. Conquer. And we must be their biggest target, since sabotage on our infrastructure is always growing more common, and they’re always ready to snap up start-ups we have on the radar or to send an assassin to a conference meeting.”

From his side, Alex unsheathed a beautiful obsidian blade, incredibly sharp and yet reflective and glassy. It was as much a work of art as it was a deadly weapon.

“And they’re never without plausible deniability. The corporation can’t fight A.I. in the open, and we’re barely keeping up with them under the table. In fact, that’s why you all have been hired. We’re going to be handling crisis cases.”

He reached under the desk, opening a drawer and withdrawing a manila folder he tossed onto the table. The contents slid out, spreading across the lacquered wood, revealing photos, documents, reports of combat encounters and investigations into a variety of scenarios.

“Rarely is there a day without something happening. You’re all going to have to get used to rolling out quick and fucking shit up. Most of the time it’ll probably tie back to Automotive Industries.”

Alex stood up straight, leaning over the table and pointing right at Marc’s face.

“So that’s why I can’t trust you. Not yet. I can’t remove you, but I’m not letting you watch my back. I’m fine without a dagger in there, thank you.”

Marc raised both hands in a gesture of surrender, taken aback by his accusation.

“Well, I—”

He didn’t even get a whole sentence out before Nova, bored and curious, picked up the old corded phone that sat on the side of Alex’s large oak executive’s desk. She vaguely understood what one did with it, namely putting it to your ear. However, Nova did not have ears, as her whole body could sense sound. The muscle memory she absorbed from the moonlight assassin she ate told her to do it, so she did. A brief crackling was followed by a voice on the other end.

“Huh? Alex? Is that you? You’re not supposed to be calling me first, I only call you when there’s a new operation for you to deploy on.”

Alex snatched the phone out of her hands and spoke into the receiver quickly.

“Apologies, Mission Director. One of the new hires was just a little curious about the corded phone and picked it up.”

“Oh, I see. Do try to get them settled in, because you never know when a mission will— here’s one now, actually. From up top, priority level 4. Looks like some villain is messing with our incoming shipments of materials. Head to the port and make sure nothing else is stolen. You get a bonus if you can catch them too, by the way.”

“Are we expected to let the newbies tag along?”

“It’s only level four. You’ll be fine, I’m sure. Put ‘em to good use, I’d hate to see this division get axed for inefficiency. Good luck!”

Alex put the phone down, and then buried his head in his hands. Aliza patted him on the shoulder.

“I SUPPOSE WE SHOULD GET GOING,” said Imacula, hovering back over to the elevator door.

“Glad to be working with y’all,” said Yiel, still holding a pitchfork for whatever reason.

Avalle said nothing and merely shuffled after them. Marc waved to Nova to get her in the elevator too, and Alex and Aliza stepped in last, letting the door close behind them. It was a very awkward ride down.

They arrived hours past noon, a clown car of employees filing out of the company van. Marc stood, hunched over, hands on his knees on the sidewalk.

“Oh god, why is the AC broken? I’m gonna throw up.”

Aliza stepped out of the passenger seat, feeling the ocean breeze catch her hair. Even at around 3:00 PM the air was cool and refreshing, the morning fog a quiet memory, making way for a sunny day amongst the stacks of shipping containers that went five, six, sometimes seven containers high. They were all arranged in such a way that they resembled small buildings, placed in standardized intervals. Walking through the concrete lot between the colorful reds, greens, and blues of corrugated steel felt like a stroll through a pre-Dust city, mostly devoid of the technological revolution of the Boon Wave.

“Take a deep breath and you’ll be fine. Nothing like the salty spray of the sea to get you up and moving, eh?” said Aliza, patting Alex on the back as he got out the driver’s seat.

“No, actually, the salt gets in my fur. Let’s get this over with.”

Avalle climbed up the side of one of the shipping container stacks (she can do that?) and stared off into the distance, pointing towards somewhere miles away.

“Hey, Marc, I can see the beach from here!”

“Ugh. You sure can. How do you feel, Nova? Better than me?”

Nova was not, in fact, better than him. He looked down to see her pooling at his feet as a really thick puddle, Her shotgun bumped into his foot as Puddle Nova slowly slid away. She slowly began reforming while Alex walked off to talk to the port’s foreman, eagerly awaiting their arrival.

“Seaside Pacifiers division, is it? From Catgirls Inc?”

“That’s us. We’ve got some business down at the dock.”

“We’ve heard. Whoever it is steals from everyone, and I’m the one taking all the heat for it. How’s it my fault? My Empowerment only lets me arrange things efficiently. I can’t possibly fight thieves.”

“Rest assured, sir, we’ll handle the problem. Since the police can’t.”

The foreman rolled his eyes, taking off his hard hat to scratch his head.

“Never trust a government owned institution, huh? I thought the Wall Collective were better before being nationalized.”

“I’m not nearly that old to remember that, but I’ll take your word for it. We’ll be off, sir.”

“Good luck!”

Yiel decided to just leave the pitchfork in the van, the bulky thing. Imacula paid no mind to the blazing sun, as if the heat did not bake them in the dark robes. Alex led the squad inwards towards the docks… all except Nova, who was just recovering from puddle mode. She eyed the group walking away, seeing Marc trailing behind. Then she looked around and noticed various buildings onsite, and others just behind the port that she could maybe explore…