> Among the Olympians, there is a role called the Libero, and you will never see anything quite like it in the Sections. Our societies are built on a foundation of single combat, where personal strength reigns over all other kinds. Defense cannot come without offense. A shield cannot be wielded without a sword. One must wield their tools in both directions if they are to excel.
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> The Libero is not a defiance of this foundation. It is merely an acknowledgement that there is more to life than the square. There are times when a child will run to their father’s arms for safety. When a broken man will weep into the shoulder of his brother. When a woman who bears all burdens begs for another to lift them from her shoulders, even if only for a moment.
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> There are times when calamity comes, primordial dread takes hold, and shelter is the only thing that matters.
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> A Libero is a bastion, a father’s arms, a shoulder to lean on, a breath of respite, and a shelter all may run to. It does not take a Guardian to bear that kind of weight. But I assure you, the extra durability helps.
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> -Crucible IV, shortly before the Exodus
Some of the most unquantifiable attributes of a fighter are also the most important ones to possess, and tenacity definitely tops my personal list. You can train your body in a gym, you can train your mind in a library, and you can train your reflexes on an aim routine, but sheer grit is something that only can be built when you’re faced with choices between doing things the easy way or the hard way. It means becoming the master of your own human weaknesses. Of doing the painful stuff even when you want nothing more than to collapse. Of understanding that you just-got-mauled-through-the-stomach, but someone has to wrap the wound, and you’re the only one who can. Or in my current case, of dictating a journal while doing half an hour of upside-down situps from a rafter in the range.
At their core, the Guardian class is designed to make that choice easier. It doesn’t deaden you to your sense of pain. It just lets you endure that pain for far longer than normal people can. Even my aura can’t prop me up to the same degree a Guardian can stay standing- at a certain point of wounding, my body will start needing so much energy to force it into motion that the heat of just conducting that energy into my muscles would incinerate me from the inside out. There’s a gulf between the kind of damage I can take and the unending punishment that Guardians are built to withstand.
As one of the classes commonly headlining the Enhancement group, Guardians do come with a hefty amount of passive improvements over the average human. While their sense of pain may be no duller, their body is naturally more resilient to all forms of physical and nonphysical damage. Their wounds cut shallower and seal faster, they have built-in resistance to mental tampering, and they’re less able to be moved unwillingly by outside forces. If a normal body is a wooden fence, Guardians are a brick wall in comparison.
It’s a classic mistake to think that they’re slower or stupider just because they’re bigger, bulkier, or tougher. The only reason someone would pick the class is if they had a very specific goal for it in mind. Guardians are tacticians, and their resource is their own health bar. Knowing when to take hits and how to take them is the backbone of their class-specific fighting techniques. Fighting a Guardian is an exercise not just of their toughness, but your own as well: knowing how to probe their defenses and ration your stamina long enough to break them down is something only gained through practical experience. And when they mix that level of durability with a powerful offensive class or two, you’ll find yourself facing off with an opponent who walks your attacks off like scratches and devastates you in return. Not an easy win by any means.
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There are ways to beat Guardians, of course. Force cages, entanglements, flight, armor-piercing weaponry, and outright speed are all avenues that can take them down if they don’t have flexibility to match. By devoting one of their three classes to a solely defensive skillset that offers no extra offensive or movement capabilities, Guardians become more vulnerable to being attacked in a way that they aren’t prepared to cover. Combine that with the relative unflashiness of a strictly-defense class, and you can probably understand why it wasn’t all that popular in the past. Especially in my Section. We love our showstoppers, and Guardians are pretty much the anathema of a high-octane class. Even Gami hasn’t changed the class’ reputation much- he’s just made people realize that they should have been afraid of it. Near invulnerability gets worlds scarier when it’s attached to a morph-capable titan who can attack in every direction simultaneously.
Outside of its dearth of durability enhancements and pop-up shielding abilities, there is one major field where the Guardians can flex their ingenuity. Like Duelists and Gunslingers, Guardians also have access to an armory via their JOYs; though instead of weapons, it gives them free access to a variety of armor types ranging from vacuum-capable suits to combat-grade duraweave clothing. The same armory limitations apply as before: if it leaves your personal reach, it dissolves. But being able to summon and tailor that level of armor on the fly is a financial advantage that lures in plenty of fighters who might not normally pick up the class. Unless you’re a Guardian, combat-grade defensive materials like duraweave needs to be made by hand before it can be bartered for or freely used. The quality of the material depends entirely on the talent of the crafter, and the best textile recipes are carefully guarded secrets of the guilds who created them. Which means it’s expensive. Very expensive. How Dad was able to acquire a seemingly limitless supply of top-tier weave perfectly tailored to every stage of my childhood wasn’t something I ever gave conscious thought. His old uni jacket that I wear everyday has saved my hide on more than a few occasions.
In a way, you can think of the Guardian to armor as what a Duelist is to melee weaponry, and the defensive enhancements as a compensation package for picking a class with no offensive capabilities. Famous paragons of the class are almost always defined by the appearance of their armored shell- it’s rare to see an unarmored Guardian, and when you do, it’s usually just a modified appearance to mimic an unarmored style.
I’ve never had a chance to fight alongside a user of the class myself. Solo combat is all I ever trained in as a kid- usually against Thane- and while I can handle myself in a crowd, I’ve never been a part of a mass battle like those that occurred during my father’s era. I’ve only got some old vids to study by. While limited, they all paint a similar picture: the larger a conflict, the less reliance there is on a single fighter to dictate victory. No one person is responsible for all their own offense and defense- instead, the burden to cover different roles can be delegated wider, allowing for specialization that isn’t normally possible in a regulation arena match. While a purely defensive fighter would never be able to win on their own, in a group setting, having a bastion that an entire team or strike force can rally behind for protection is an invaluable asset. It lets both offensive specialists hyper-focus on their strongest suits, allowing a dedicated Guardian become a wall against which all enemies break.
I’ve heard that kind of team-centric combat is the norm on Olympus. Roles, teams, and factions are more rigidly defined, and noteworthy solo fighters aren’t common to see. It’s a totally different world than home- one I have a near-zero chance of ever being able to visit, given the current trajectory of my circumstances. Sitting on the top of the city’s most-wanted leaderboard isn’t exactly conducive to a long and fulfilling life.
…and now I’m hanging with my legs looped over the bar, scrolling upside-down pictures of vacation hotspots on Olympus. Great going, Tets. Stare at that ludicrously buttered crab leg. Think about how good and warm that ocean would feel. Imagine how clean the air must be.
Ugh.
I’m gonna go take a shower. A cold shower; because the hot water has been broken since day one. Just like everything else in this god-damned undercity.