It took an afternoon, an evening, and an entire morning. But on Sunday at noon, when it was finally finished and they collapsed in the living room to examine the fruits of their labor, they all arrived at the same conclusion.
“Is it just me,” said Alden from where he was sprawled on top of the chesterfield sofa, enjoying the smell of the soft leather, “or is this place really awesome now?”
“It’s perfect.” Haoyu was playing with the app on his tablet that controlled the dimmers on all of the apartment’s new lighting. “Thank you for letting me paint the antler fixture copper.”
Alden stared up at it. “I think we’re firmly in luxury huntski lodge territory now, so it fits.”
“Sunny likes it, too,” said Lute.
Sunny was the fake polar bear head mounted on the wall at the end of the hallway that separated their bedrooms. They had given him a pair of sunglasses, to protect Lexi from his plastic eyes.
“We still need to put up the curtain around the bathtub,” Lexi reminded them. He’d claimed one of the new armchairs as his personal favorite seat. Any time they took a break, he planted himself in it before anyone else could even take a step toward it. “If Lute’s going to spend three hours a night in there—”
“I was contemplating. You could have used the shower at the same time. It’s not like I locked you out.”
“When do we invite people over to see the place?” Haoyu asked. “It’s done unless we decide to paint so—”
“Never,” Lute and Lexi said simultaneously.
“Why?” Haoyu sounded surprised.
Alden rolled over onto his side to watch them.
Haoyu and Lexi were both in athletic wear. Lexi was wearing a sleeveless shirt with a logo for a ballet school where he had, until recently, been taking classes. Lute had taken off his eyepatch last night while they worked, and he hadn’t put it back on today. He said it wasn’t comfortable when his face was sweaty.
“Someone who hates me will come over and piss on Alden’s rugs.”
“Kon will want to throw a themed party in our room the second he sees it.”
Haoyu looked between the two of them and then at Alden.
“I don’t mind the occasional guest, but if someone pisses on my rugs you have to help me kill them,” Alden told him.
“I don’t think anyone would do that.”
“They violated a pair of my sneakers on Thursday. Alden is my witness.”
Lexi’s expression twisted. “Wait, you’re serious about someone pissing on your things? What kind of animals are you hanging out with?”
“I’m not hanging out with—”
“How do they do it?” Haoyu asked. “Can you not dodge fast enough?”
“They don’t pee on them when my feet are in them! And it’s not someone I’m hanging out with. Some disgusting psycho gets them when I’m in class on the Artonan culture floor. Anyway, who cares about my shoes? I have plenty. But we have to protect Sunny, the rugs, and Angela Aubergine.”
“You guys…” Haoyu said plaintively. “I want to show it off a little. I bet nobody else has a room this cool. And people keep inviting me over to see theirs.”
“There are a few people I’d like to have over at some point,” Alden said.
“Who?” Lexi asked suspiciously.
“Rabbits I got to know in intake.”
“Do you really plan to keep Kon out of the apartment forever?” Haoyu asked Lexi. “He’s your brother. And he lives one floor above us.”
“It’s not just Kon. I have analyzed all of the other boys in our acceptance group,” said Lexi. “And I’m sure none of them need to be here.”
Lute looked at Alden. “Is the hero track that bad, or is he just making angry noises again?”
Alden grinned. “They’re not all bad. Finlay seems really nice.”
“Too nice,” Lexi said, as if Finlay had committed a crime. “He’ll bring over one of his new roommates, and his new roommates include the Aqua Brute.”
“Do we hate the Aqua Brute?” Lute asked.
Alden shook his head. “Jeffy is…”
“We don’t hate him!” Haoyu said. “He is a little…lively?”
“Yeah. Lively.”
“Lively is bad? And is it true Tuyet got accepted to the program with you guys? Because I didn’t see that coming even with an S. She’s always seemed so nervous. And Dart Meister is an unusual choice. You wouldn’t think—”
Knock, knock, knock.
“It could be any of them,” Lexi hissed as Alden stood up. “Don’t answer it.”
Alden raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s just the groceries we ordered. To fill the fridge. I got a message from the shopper.”
********
They spent most of the afternoon working on their own projects and minding their own business.
After lunch, all of them naturally drifted apart to take care of what they needed to. Haoyu was studying in his room with the door open. Lexi was in his with the door closed. Lute alternated between doing homework on a large tablet in the living room and practicing on a harp smaller than Angela—an electric one with headphones so that he wouldn’t disturb the rest of them.
Every time Alden stepped out of his room to grab something from the kitchen, he felt more and more impressed with the fact that Lexi actually had managed to find people who could stand to be around him and each other and also quietly pursue their own interests for hours at a time.
Maybe we’re all on our best behavior because it’s new, but this is nice.
He was studying, too. Magic.
At some point he had to get soundproofing for his room. Some kind of painfully expensive Wrightwork setup probably. But he’d eventually have wanted that wherever he was staying.
For now, he was working with the door locked. He settled onto his new learning cushion. He’d picked out one that looked as similar to the cushion from the lab as possible, but it was still disappointingly inferior.
It was better than nothing, though, and until he found a piece of furniture he wanted for the bedroom, it had a place of honor on top of a shag rug. Since he’d finished all his homework with Boe, he could sit and practice with the auriad for hours.
He even let himself pull the memory foam pillows off the bed so that he could hit them a few times with the square-punch spell. It wasn’t silent, but it just sounded like someone smacking pillows. If anyone heard him and wondered, he’d say he was punching them the old fashioned way for some kind of practice.
At six o’clock, he tucked his auriad back under his cuff bracelet and opened his curtains. In the girls’ dormitory across from theirs, someone was putting a line of electronic tea lights in her window for Diwali. She spotted Alden, and they waved at each other.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. On Thegund, in the crater that was home to the lab, it was night now. Cold, dark, and starless. Alis-art’h’s team should have made it to the area last week. They were probably beyond it now. Every day, the Quaternary erased a little more of that broken world, and every day, it grew just a little more distant from Alden.
A chattering group was passing by on the walkway below him. When he opened his eyes again and looked down, he recognized Astrid, Heloísa, and a couple of other girls from the party.
It’s good to be settling in. It feels like I’m finally a part of something that might last for a while.
[Haoyu: This is our official room chat, right?]
[Lute: Yes.]
[Haoyu: I’m going to eat at Cafeteria North. Do you all want to come?]
[Alden: I’ll come.]
[Lute: Bring me something. I’m filling the tub.]
[Lexi: We need a schedule for the tub. You can’t just occupy it from six to nine every night.]
[Lute: Bring me something I can eat in the tub.]
Alden smiled and grabbed his messenger bag from the desk.
A few minutes later, he and Haoyu were about to cross the street in front of the university’s main dining hall, when Lexi sprinted up behind them.
“You know he’s really requesting that we bring him a full three course meal?” he groused. “Are we his maids? Who does that?”
“He wants steak frites and a creme brûlée from the French place. I’m kind of admiring his taste,” said Alden.
“How does somebody eat steak in the bath?”
“He addresses that. You’ll see if you keep reading the group chat. He wants a bread roll for it.”
“And blue cheese dressing so he can make his own sandwich,” Haoyu added.
“Well we’re obviously not going to do that,” Lexi scoffed
Alden smiled. “I am, though.”
Lexi stared at him as the light changed and they crossed the street. “Why?”
“Why wouldn’t I? It’s easy, and I like carrying food with my skill. I can deliver perfect hot French fries. It’s powerful.”
“He was telling me he keeps ice cream in his pockets sometimes,” Haoyu said. “He offered to bring me stuff when I want, too.”
“We should have roommate perks,” Alden said. “I’ll bring you hot fries for the bathtub, too, Lexi.”
Lexi rolled his eyes. “I can get my own food.”
“Just wait. One day you’re going to be miserable and hungry, and you’ll be glad you live with me then.”
The weekend crowd at Cafeteria North was always lighter, but at this hour, it was still fairly busy. They all three headed for the salad bar. It had enough options that Alden could eat there every day for a month without repeating a topping, so he was trying not to be a whiner about the fact that it tasted like fresh produce instead of angel tears.
He threw some sweet potato cubes on a bed of arugula. Then he added a scoop of roasted almonds. Chipotle tofu? Yeah, okay.
There was a girl ahead of him counting the number of cubes she took.
I can’t bring myself to do that. I’m hungry. And lazy. Natalie, I need you.
“We could go out with the others for just a little while tonight,” Haoyu was telling Lexi as Alden joined the two of them at a table near the fountain. “It would be fun.”
“I actually have a club meeting tonight,” Alden said.
“You’re in a club already! Which one?”
“I was invited. I’ve never gone. The B-list.”
“Oh, your rank club,” said Lexi.
“The guy who invited me said they had private use of the gym at eight on Sundays, so I thought I’d try it.”
Haoyu stabbed at his salmon and lettuce. “The B-list gets private gym time? The A-list doesn’t! Lexi won’t even go with me to any of the events because he says it’s just a bunch of dumb social hours.”
“The A-rank club would have to persuade a lot of faculty members to work overtime to monitor us in the gym,” said Lexi. “There are less than forty B’s. Even if every single one of them shows up each week, they probably only need to convince a couple of advisors.”
“No fair!”
“Reconsider that,” Lexi muttered, looking down at his own food. He’d gotten the salmon, too, but he’d separated all of his ingredients into piles on his plate instead of making a salad out of them.
Haoyu blinked at him then back at Alden. He chewed for a while.
“Nope. Still unfair,” he decided. “My mom says the B’s who get picked for hero track are some of the best students anyway, with some of the most unique powers. So no pity from me for being lower ranks. If I thought that way, I’d just have to feel sorry for myself for not being an S.”
“What’s really unfair is that the Superlatives have club gym time, too,” Lexi said. “Kon was looking into it.”
“The S-rank club calls themselves the Superlatives?” Alden asked.
“Of course they do. ‘B-list’ is some decent, self-deprecating humor. ‘A-list’ is just embarrassing when there’s a rank club above it, isn’t it?”
“You should become club president and change the name,” Haoyu said brightly.
Lexi considered him. “I’ve told you before, the fact that you deliver jokes in the exact same tone you use when you’re being serious is why nobody can ever tell when you are joking.”
“Were you joking?” Alden asked in surprise.
Haoyu nodded.
“The class-specific combat clubs have private gym time with special mentors,” said Lexi. “So I can join the other Meisters for that, and you can hang out with the Brutes.”
“Oh! Alden doesn’t have a class combat club. You should join the Brutes!”
“Do you hate him? He’s a fragile combatant with handheld shields. I admit it sounds like a difficult thing to pull off no matter who he’s going up against, but the fisticuffs club is definitely his discomfort zone.”
“Well, if he wants to win at our level…he’s good versus Shaper?”
“Shaper,” Lexi agreed.
“Ranged Meister and spellflinger Adjusters, too,” said Haoyu.
“Depends on the Meister. Depends on the Adjuster.”
“You can say that about any class. Wait, how are you even trying to win fights, Alden?”
Alden swallowed a bite of sweet potato. “What do you mean?”
“If shields are your main thing, then are you aiming for battles of attrition?”
“He wants you to say yes because he’s going for Dura Brute, and he thinks battles of attrition are the best.”
“Just refusing to stop is the most satisfying way to win,” Haoyu said, waving his fork around with passion. “Let them come at me with a fancy spell they can only cast three times or an overpowered hit that’ll break every bone in their body if they fatigue their protective talents. Let them double-on their stats and become legends…but when the dust clears, I’m still there. Saying, ‘Hello. Yes, you did look flashy. But now what have you got for me?’”
He does make it sound epic. I’m aimless by comparison.
“I honestly don’t know how I win fights,” Alden said. “I always wanted to be a support, so in that case, it wouldn’t be strictly necessary for me to be able to defeat another Avowed all by myself. As long as I could keep myself alive for long enough. But if we’re talking about me fighting people on my own…my skill will be great at protecting me if I use the right objects. It’s also got some interesting—”
“You can carry heavy stuff!” Haoyu said. “Isn’t it great? The first thing I did when I affixed was wander around the house lifting things I couldn’t before.”
“I haven’t practiced much with—”
“How much of a hit can that shield of yours take?” Lexi asked. “Magically and physically?”
“I’m not—”
“How big of an object can you protect?”
“I have no idea.”
Lexi frowned.
Haoyu looked amused. “How can you not know? Are you not curious?”
“I am! Of course. But…”
It’s changed since I practiced with Joe and Kibby. And it was a lot easier for someone like Haoyu, with superheroes for parents, to safely experiment with his limits before starting school.
“Well, don’t worry about it,” said Haoyu. “Try stuff you’re curious about in rank club. If the other B’s are cool, ask them if Lexi and I can come by sometime!”
Lexi sighed. “Don’t just invite yourself to dominate the lower rank—”
“I’m here to improve. They are too. Maybe they’d like to try their skills on a Dura Brute! And your weapon’s unusual. It would be great practice for all of us.”
“Don’t mention this idea to the B-list, Alden. Anesidora Social Dynamic—they’ll hate it.”
Haoyu flicked a caper at him. “You think everyone is a rank-biased backstabber. I bet the B’s are really nice and open-minded.”
At 7:30 PM, Alden stepped out of the men’s locker room in the MPE building wearing his very own gym suit. It had been waiting for him in his new locker, along with a list of care instructions that boiled down to, “Don’t store it in your dorm. Don’t do experiments on it. Use the cleaner cabinet in the on-site laundry room before you start to stink.”
He crossed the hallway, wheeling his giant suitcase behind him. The gym doors opened before he reached them, and Max stepped through.
“You’re early, too,” the Adjuster said, taking in Alden’s unitard and the suitcase with a glance.
“Yeah, I thought half an hour was overboard, but there are already a couple of other guys getting dressed.”
“Suitcase?”
“I’m planning to experiment with it.”
And probably destroy it in the process. It was a good and faithful suitcase. And it was also taking up way too much space in his bedroom. Live and learn, and buy a stupidly large duffel bag next time instead.
He entered the gym. There was a girl running laps, and a couple of people were stretching off to the side. A boy was doing double-footed jumps up the bleachers.
“The floor’s off!” one of the stretchers called as soon as she spotted Alden.
“Floor’s off!” almost everyone else repeated in unison.
A safety call?
He went to the storage room under the bleachers. It was a large area with signs on the wall designating it as a back-up safe zone for multiple kinds of emergency. Though the people fleeing the emergencies would have to share space with a lot of equipment.
When I was here for testing day, I saw…
There. About halfway in, along one wall, there were stacks of elemental weights for Shapers. The sandbags were piled up between refillable water bags and larger “lifemass” bags. Alden wondered what exactly those were stuffed with.
Is there a sign-out sheet for taking these, or can we just have them?
He heard the storage room door shut. He didn’t think anything of it until the boy and girl who had just entered started whispering to each other a few feet away from him.
“Can anyone borrow these?” he asked, pointing at the sandbags.
The boy—death-pale with straight black hair that hung like curtains down to his collarbones—smiled. “That depends. Are you one of us? Or are you an interloper?”
“An interloper?” Alden asked.
“Those are B-rank only bags right now,” said the girl. She had the letter B on each cheek in green paint that matched her eyeshadow, and a frizzy blonde puff of a ponytail stuck up from the back of her head.
“Oh! I’m a B. I’m Alden. I’m here for the clu—”
“BeeBee,” said the boy, “he’s ours.”
Before Alden could fully appreciate the fact that there was a B-rank named BeeBee who wore two B’s on her face for makeup, she was upon him.
“Let us teach you your duties!”
Ding. Ding.
As Alden looked around to see where the ringing sound was coming from, BeeBee grabbed him by the hand and hauled him toward a Rules and Regulations for Gym Use poster.
“Do you have bells?” he asked the guy.
The other boy’s thumbs flicked against the underside of a pair of black rings he wore on his index fingers.
Dong. Ding.
“Rings that sound like bells?”
He soon found himself with his back against a stack of alternate-surface tiles for the gym floor. BeeBee and the dark haired guy were standing next to the poster with grins on their faces.
“Repeat after me,” said the boy. “‘The A-ranks are our enemies.’”
“Uh…they are?” What kind of kooky welcome ritual is this?
The storage room door opened, and Max stepped through.
“Are you new blood or an interloper?” BeeBee demanded.
“What do you—?”
A moment later he was trapped against the floor tiles with Alden.
“All right, again,” said the guy with the bell jewelry. “The A-ranks are our enemies.”
“Enemies,” BeeBee hissed.
Ding. Ding.
“Put the names of your first victims on The Beat List,” the guy intoned.
“This is The Beat List,” BeeBee whispered. Then, she made a dramatic downward slicing gesture with one hand, and the poster on the wall behind her tore in two.
Behind it was a large chart, with the names of club members on the left and boxes full of other students’ names out to the right.
[What’s happening?] Max asked via text.
[I’m not sure. Do you think we’re being hazed?] Alden replied.
Ding. Dong.
Max crossed his arms over his chest. [I just wanted to try some things out in the gym, and now I feel like this club might be a bad idea.]
“Every B needs a target.”
“Every B—”
“Not again, you two! We talked about this!” The guy who’d just stepped into the storage room was wheeling a pair of weapon cases behind him. They were stamped with the words:
Rahul M.
Wrightwork
DO NOT TOUCH
“You weirded out those girls last time so bad they never came back to club!I’m starting to think you’re doing it on purpose to hog advisor attention.”
“We apologized to those girls!” BeeBee protested.
“They were just too weak for the B-List,” the boy with the bell rings said. He waved at Max. “Welcome. Don’t run away. We require new blood to carry on our holy purpose.”
Max was looking over his shoulder at the chart on the wall. “Your holy purpose is…making a hit list for A-ranks in your combat classes?”
“It’s very simple,” said the girl, pointing first at Max and then at Alden. “As a B, you are not allowed to suck the most in your year. There must be some A’s beneath you. The first years have been letting us down hard lately.”
“BeeBee!” snapped Rahul.
“They can’t fight for shit.”
“Francis! Get lost, you two, before I tell Instructor Plim you’re abusing the new first years!”
“You wouldn—”
“GO!”
“You’re a mean old man, Rahul,” said BeeBee, bouncing past him toward the door. “I’m gonna break your guns before you graduate.”
Francis watched her leave. “I know what you’re both thinking,” he said to Max and Alden. He made a curving hourglass shape in the air with his hands. “She’s amazing, but she’s my girlfriend. We’re madly in love. Don’t make me use these on you for real.”
He flicked his rings.
Ding. Ding.
While Alden and Max watched with equally baffled expressions on their faces, Rahul grabbed Francis by the back of his unitard and dragged him toward the door.
“I’m not threatening them, man!” he said, laughing. “I’m laying down boundaries!”
Rahul shut the door in his face, then he turned to them. “Hi! I’m so sorry about those two. Most people here are sane. I’m Rahul. Third year. I’m already taking half my classes at uni, and I graduate from high in March when I pass the final combat course. Until then, I seem to be club president.”
He shook their hands.
“So you’re our new Adjuster and our new Rabbit,” he added before they could even introduce themselves. “Instructor Plim is…enthused. I mean she’s always that way. But she’s extra that way this time around.”
Alden glanced at The Beat List. If they were really keeping score of A-ranks they’d defeated, then Francis and someone above him named Ella-Clara were not people he wanted to pick a fight with.
Then what Rahul had said caught up with him. “Is Instructor Plim the B-list advisor?”
That would be great. The Creative Applications teacher was someone he really wanted to work with, and he couldn’t take one of her classes until next quarter.
“Yes. All the other clubs keep trying to poach her. It would be a disaster for us. Fortunately, there are an abnormal number of abnormal people at B rank. And she just loves the fact that we’re mostly desperate enough to try whatever she suggests.”
He rummaged in a cardboard box hidden behind the floor tile stack and pulled out another poster and a roll of tape. He started covering The Beat List with it.
“Don’t feel pressured to take part in this Defeat the A’s nonsense unless you find it motivating. It’s not a real part of the club. It wasn’t when I started at CNH anyway. B’s in the hero track tend to be extremely studious and hardworking, but our second years are all…viciously competitive…on top of that. It might be some strange side effect of being around Ella-Clara. Don’t bother her, and she won’t bother you.”
Rahul patted the poster into place and sighed. “Sometimes I feel boring in this club. A Wright specializing in multi-object launchers should be one of the odder people in the room, but not here.”
Max cleared his throat. “During my first time applying to the school…”
Alden looked over at him in surprise.
“…the interview committee for the final round said that a B shouldn’t expect acceptance unless we had something to offer that a higher rank with the exact same subclass couldn’t.”
“It’s not an uncommon point of view. A bit of a ‘prove you’re special enough or go back to F-city’ attitude.” Rahul shrugged. “It’s understandable, so there’s no point worrying over it. I suggest you see it as a challenge to rise to.”
He knelt and started unlatching his weapon cases.
“There should be plenty of people in the gym by now. Enough to dilute the more unusual personalities. Go say hello!”
“Can I use the sandbags?” Alden asked quickly.
“Sure. In general, it fine to use anything in here as long as you’re sticking close to its intended purpose. And if you want to use things for non-intended purposes, Intructor Plim isn’t exactly difficult to persuade.”
I bet not.
Alden unzipped his suitcase and started adding sandbags. Max grabbed a box labeled Ground Drone and headed for the door. The club president spoke up again just before he reached it.
“By the way, Francis’s class clown routine is partially an attempt to put people at ease. Since he’s a Sway. I don’t know that it works the way he means for it to, especially since he’s trying to make everyone think his mind control bells aren’t scary by using them to punctuate regular sentences…well, just a warning. Have fun!”
Max’s eyes widened. “Yes. I’ll try.”
What the hell is a mind control bell? Alden wondered as he loaded another sandbag in. He hadn’t felt himself being targeted, and he hadn’t felt the need to do what Francis said, so he guessed it was all right. “Alden…if you want a heavy weight, you don’t have to fill a suitcase with smaller ones. There are 120 kilo bags on the bottom.”
“This is better I think.” The big bags looked like giant sausages, and they didn’t have as many handholds as the suitcase did. Anyway, using luggage with his skill was poetic. When he had 100 kilos, he zipped it. Then he discretely placed Joe’s enchanted ring on the ground beside the handle. “Would you mind telling me to pick all of this up? It’s for my skill.”
Rahul looked up from assembling a large gun that had some unexpectedly squishy-looking parts.
“Sure? Pick it up.”
“Thanks,” said Alden. He found the part of his affixation that controlled the number of separate protective fields he could maintain. Don’t think of it as a switch. Go for something just a little more creative.
He grabbed the side handle of the bag. That part of the affixation tried to close—an automatic setting to prevent double activation. He held it in place, trying to paper-ify the process in his mind so it would fit with his new metaphor. Like keeping an origami piece that’s been partially unfolded from snapping back shut along the creases?
He picked up the ring. He slipped it onto the middle finger of his left hand, then he stood. Both items were preserved. The suitcase was light—physically at least.
He let his attention leave that part of the affixation, and he felt it close.
Double-running the skill on objects had been absurdly exhausting on Moon Thegund, and now it was only slightly less absurdly exhausting. He was debating the merits of making it his hidden handicap.
He didn’t think he needed to hide the power level of his skill much at this point. He’d shown it off a lot during the trials, and the idea of the System granting him a fake profile was so absurd that he was sure he wasn’t in danger of provoking suspicion yet. Not accurate suspicions at least.
Humans were going to assume any additional prowess was the result of a dozen more likely factors before they ever got around to thinking, “Maybe the System lies to us about this one specific sixteen-year-old guy.”
But carrying multiple preserved objects was something he wanted to practice anyway, and if as a side effect, it made him look a little less like an outlier that was a good thing.
All right. Now stay cool, Alden, he thought as he headed back into the gym. If you drop the skill and break some part of your body with a two hundred twenty pound bag, everyone will think you’re too much of a dumbass to be allowed.
*
It took an afternoon, an evening, and an entire morning. But on Sunday at noon, when it was finally finished and they collapsed in the living room to examine the fruits of their labor, they all arrived at the same conclusion.
“Is it just me,” said Alden from where he was sprawled on top of the chesterfield sofa, enjoying the smell of the soft leather, “or is this place really awesome now?”
“It’s perfect.” Haoyu was playing with the app on his tablet that controlled the dimmers on all of the apartment’s new lighting. “Thank you for letting me paint the antler fixture copper.”
Alden stared up at it. “I think we’re firmly in luxury huntski lodge territory now, so it fits.”
“Sunny likes it, too,” said Lute.
Sunny was the fake polar bear head mounted on the wall at the end of the hallway that separated their bedrooms. They had given him a pair of sunglasses, to protect Lexi from his plastic eyes.
“We still need to put up the curtain around the bathtub,” Lexi reminded them. He’d claimed one of the new armchairs as his personal favorite seat. Any time they took a break, he planted himself in it before anyone else could even take a step toward it. “If Lute’s going to spend three hours a night in there—”
“I was contemplating. You could have used the shower at the same time. It’s not like I locked you out.”
“When do we invite people over to see the place?” Haoyu asked. “It’s done unless we decide to paint so—”
“Never,” Lute and Lexi said simultaneously.
“Why?” Haoyu sounded surprised.
Alden rolled over onto his side to watch them.
Haoyu and Lexi were both in athletic wear. Lexi was wearing a sleeveless shirt with a logo for a ballet school where he had, until recently, been taking classes. Lute had taken off his eyepatch last night while they worked, and he hadn’t put it back on today. He said it wasn’t comfortable when his face was sweaty.
“Someone who hates me will come over and piss on Alden’s rugs.”
“Kon will want to throw a themed party in our room the second he sees it.”
Haoyu looked between the two of them and then at Alden.
“I don’t mind the occasional guest, but if someone pisses on my rugs you have to help me kill them,” Alden told him.
“I don’t think anyone would do that.”
“They violated a pair of my sneakers on Thursday. Alden is my witness.”
Lexi’s expression twisted. “Wait, you’re serious about someone pissing on your things? What kind of animals are you hanging out with?”
“I’m not hanging out with—”
“How do they do it?” Haoyu asked. “Can you not dodge fast enough?”
“They don’t pee on them when my feet are in them! And it’s not someone I’m hanging out with. Some disgusting psycho gets them when I’m in class on the Artonan culture floor. Anyway, who cares about my shoes? I have plenty. But we have to protect Sunny, the rugs, and Angela Aubergine.”
“You guys…” Haoyu said plaintively. “I want to show it off a little. I bet nobody else has a room this cool. And people keep inviting me over to see theirs.”
“There are a few people I’d like to have over at some point,” Alden said.
“Who?” Lexi asked suspiciously.
“Rabbits I got to know in intake.”
“Do you really plan to keep Kon out of the apartment forever?” Haoyu asked Lexi. “He’s your brother. And he lives one floor above us.”
“It’s not just Kon. I have analyzed all of the other boys in our acceptance group,” said Lexi. “And I’m sure none of them need to be here.”
Lute looked at Alden. “Is the hero track that bad, or is he just making angry noises again?”
Alden grinned. “They’re not all bad. Finlay seems really nice.”
“Too nice,” Lexi said, as if Finlay had committed a crime. “He’ll bring over one of his new roommates, and his new roommates include the Aqua Brute.”
“Do we hate the Aqua Brute?” Lute asked.
Alden shook his head. “Jeffy is…”
“We don’t hate him!” Haoyu said. “He is a little…lively?”
“Yeah. Lively.”
“Lively is bad? And is it true Tuyet got accepted to the program with you guys? Because I didn’t see that coming even with an S. She’s always seemed so nervous. And Dart Meister is an unusual choice. You wouldn’t think—”
Knock, knock, knock.
“It could be any of them,” Lexi hissed as Alden stood up. “Don’t answer it.”
Alden raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s just the groceries we ordered. To fill the fridge. I got a message from the shopper.”
********
They spent most of the afternoon working on their own projects and minding their own business.
After lunch, all of them naturally drifted apart to take care of what they needed to. Haoyu was studying in his room with the door open. Lexi was in his with the door closed. Lute alternated between doing homework on a large tablet in the living room and practicing on a harp smaller than Angela—an electric one with headphones so that he wouldn’t disturb the rest of them.
Every time Alden stepped out of his room to grab something from the kitchen, he felt more and more impressed with the fact that Lexi actually had managed to find people who could stand to be around him and each other and also quietly pursue their own interests for hours at a time.
Maybe we’re all on our best behavior because it’s new, but this is nice.
He was studying, too. Magic.
At some point he had to get soundproofing for his room. Some kind of painfully expensive Wrightwork setup probably. But he’d eventually have wanted that wherever he was staying.
For now, he was working with the door locked. He settled onto his new learning cushion. He’d picked out one that looked as similar to the cushion from the lab as possible, but it was still disappointingly inferior.
It was better than nothing, though, and until he found a piece of furniture he wanted for the bedroom, it had a place of honor on top of a shag rug. Since he’d finished all his homework with Boe, he could sit and practice with the auriad for hours.
He even let himself pull the memory foam pillows off the bed so that he could hit them a few times with the square-punch spell. It wasn’t silent, but it just sounded like someone smacking pillows. If anyone heard him and wondered, he’d say he was punching them the old fashioned way for some kind of practice.
At six o’clock, he tucked his auriad back under his cuff bracelet and opened his curtains. In the girls’ dormitory across from theirs, someone was putting a line of electronic tea lights in her window for Diwali. She spotted Alden, and they waved at each other.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. On Thegund, in the crater that was home to the lab, it was night now. Cold, dark, and starless. Alis-art’h’s team should have made it to the area last week. They were probably beyond it now. Every day, the Quaternary erased a little more of that broken world, and every day, it grew just a little more distant from Alden.
A chattering group was passing by on the walkway below him. When he opened his eyes again and looked down, he recognized Astrid, Heloísa, and a couple of other girls from the party.
It’s good to be settling in. It feels like I’m finally a part of something that might last for a while.
[Haoyu: This is our official room chat, right?]
[Lute: Yes.]
[Haoyu: I’m going to eat at Cafeteria North. Do you all want to come?]
[Alden: I’ll come.]
[Lute: Bring me something. I’m filling the tub.]
[Lexi: We need a schedule for the tub. You can’t just occupy it from six to nine every night.]
[Lute: Bring me something I can eat in the tub.]
Alden smiled and grabbed his messenger bag from the desk.
A few minutes later, he and Haoyu were about to cross the street in front of the university’s main dining hall, when Lexi sprinted up behind them.
“You know he’s really requesting that we bring him a full three course meal?” he groused. “Are we his maids? Who does that?”
“He wants steak frites and a creme brûlée from the French place. I’m kind of admiring his taste,” said Alden.
“How does somebody eat steak in the bath?”
“He addresses that. You’ll see if you keep reading the group chat. He wants a bread roll for it.”
“And blue cheese dressing so he can make his own sandwich,” Haoyu added.
“Well we’re obviously not going to do that,” Lexi scoffed
Alden smiled. “I am, though.”
Lexi stared at him as the light changed and they crossed the street. “Why?”
“Why wouldn’t I? It’s easy, and I like carrying food with my skill. I can deliver perfect hot French fries. It’s powerful.”
“He was telling me he keeps ice cream in his pockets sometimes,” Haoyu said. “He offered to bring me stuff when I want, too.”
“We should have roommate perks,” Alden said. “I’ll bring you hot fries for the bathtub, too, Lexi.”
Lexi rolled his eyes. “I can get my own food.”
“Just wait. One day you’re going to be miserable and hungry, and you’ll be glad you live with me then.”
The weekend crowd at Cafeteria North was always lighter, but at this hour, it was still fairly busy. They all three headed for the salad bar. It had enough options that Alden could eat there every day for a month without repeating a topping, so he was trying not to be a whiner about the fact that it tasted like fresh produce instead of angel tears.
He threw some sweet potato cubes on a bed of arugula. Then he added a scoop of roasted almonds. Chipotle tofu? Yeah, okay.
There was a girl ahead of him counting the number of cubes she took.
I can’t bring myself to do that. I’m hungry. And lazy. Natalie, I need you.
“We could go out with the others for just a little while tonight,” Haoyu was telling Lexi as Alden joined the two of them at a table near the fountain. “It would be fun.”
“I actually have a club meeting tonight,” Alden said.
“You’re in a club already! Which one?”
“I was invited. I’ve never gone. The B-list.”
“Oh, your rank club,” said Lexi.
“The guy who invited me said they had private use of the gym at eight on Sundays, so I thought I’d try it.”
Haoyu stabbed at his salmon and lettuce. “The B-list gets private gym time? The A-list doesn’t! Lexi won’t even go with me to any of the events because he says it’s just a bunch of dumb social hours.”
“The A-rank club would have to persuade a lot of faculty members to work overtime to monitor us in the gym,” said Lexi. “There are less than forty B’s. Even if every single one of them shows up each week, they probably only need to convince a couple of advisors.”
“No fair!”
“Reconsider that,” Lexi muttered, looking down at his own food. He’d gotten the salmon, too, but he’d separated all of his ingredients into piles on his plate instead of making a salad out of them.
Haoyu blinked at him then back at Alden. He chewed for a while.
“Nope. Still unfair,” he decided. “My mom says the B’s who get picked for hero track are some of the best students anyway, with some of the most unique powers. So no pity from me for being lower ranks. If I thought that way, I’d just have to feel sorry for myself for not being an S.”
“What’s really unfair is that the Superlatives have club gym time, too,” Lexi said. “Kon was looking into it.”
“The S-rank club calls themselves the Superlatives?” Alden asked.
“Of course they do. ‘B-list’ is some decent, self-deprecating humor. ‘A-list’ is just embarrassing when there’s a rank club above it, isn’t it?”
“You should become club president and change the name,” Haoyu said brightly.
Lexi considered him. “I’ve told you before, the fact that you deliver jokes in the exact same tone you use when you’re being serious is why nobody can ever tell when you are joking.”
“Were you joking?” Alden asked in surprise.
Haoyu nodded.
“The class-specific combat clubs have private gym time with special mentors,” said Lexi. “So I can join the other Meisters for that, and you can hang out with the Brutes.”
“Oh! Alden doesn’t have a class combat club. You should join the Brutes!”
“Do you hate him? He’s a fragile combatant with handheld shields. I admit it sounds like a difficult thing to pull off no matter who he’s going up against, but the fisticuffs club is definitely his discomfort zone.”
“Well, if he wants to win at our level…he’s good versus Shaper?”
“Shaper,” Lexi agreed.
“Ranged Meister and spellflinger Adjusters, too,” said Haoyu.
“Depends on the Meister. Depends on the Adjuster.”
“You can say that about any class. Wait, how are you even trying to win fights, Alden?”
Alden swallowed a bite of sweet potato. “What do you mean?”
“If shields are your main thing, then are you aiming for battles of attrition?”
“He wants you to say yes because he’s going for Dura Brute, and he thinks battles of attrition are the best.”
“Just refusing to stop is the most satisfying way to win,” Haoyu said, waving his fork around with passion. “Let them come at me with a fancy spell they can only cast three times or an overpowered hit that’ll break every bone in their body if they fatigue their protective talents. Let them double-on their stats and become legends…but when the dust clears, I’m still there. Saying, ‘Hello. Yes, you did look flashy. But now what have you got for me?’”
He does make it sound epic. I’m aimless by comparison.
“I honestly don’t know how I win fights,” Alden said. “I always wanted to be a support, so in that case, it wouldn’t be strictly necessary for me to be able to defeat another Avowed all by myself. As long as I could keep myself alive for long enough. But if we’re talking about me fighting people on my own…my skill will be great at protecting me if I use the right objects. It’s also got some interesting—”
“You can carry heavy stuff!” Haoyu said. “Isn’t it great? The first thing I did when I affixed was wander around the house lifting things I couldn’t before.”
“I haven’t practiced much with—”
“How much of a hit can that shield of yours take?” Lexi asked. “Magically and physically?”
“I’m not—”
“How big of an object can you protect?”
“I have no idea.”
Lexi frowned.
Haoyu looked amused. “How can you not know? Are you not curious?”
“I am! Of course. But…”
It’s changed since I practiced with Joe and Kibby. And it was a lot easier for someone like Haoyu, with superheroes for parents, to safely experiment with his limits before starting school.
“Well, don’t worry about it,” said Haoyu. “Try stuff you’re curious about in rank club. If the other B’s are cool, ask them if Lexi and I can come by sometime!”
Lexi sighed. “Don’t just invite yourself to dominate the lower rank—”
“I’m here to improve. They are too. Maybe they’d like to try their skills on a Dura Brute! And your weapon’s unusual. It would be great practice for all of us.”
“Don’t mention this idea to the B-list, Alden. Anesidora Social Dynamic—they’ll hate it.”
Haoyu flicked a caper at him. “You think everyone is a rank-biased backstabber. I bet the B’s are really nice and open-minded.”
At 7:30 PM, Alden stepped out of the men’s locker room in the MPE building wearing his very own gym suit. It had been waiting for him in his new locker, along with a list of care instructions that boiled down to, “Don’t store it in your dorm. Don’t do experiments on it. Use the cleaner cabinet in the on-site laundry room before you start to stink.”
He crossed the hallway, wheeling his giant suitcase behind him. The gym doors opened before he reached them, and Max stepped through.
“You’re early, too,” the Adjuster said, taking in Alden’s unitard and the suitcase with a glance.
“Yeah, I thought half an hour was overboard, but there are already a couple of other guys getting dressed.”
“Suitcase?”
“I’m planning to experiment with it.”
And probably destroy it in the process. It was a good and faithful suitcase. And it was also taking up way too much space in his bedroom. Live and learn, and buy a stupidly large duffel bag next time instead.
He entered the gym. There was a girl running laps, and a couple of people were stretching off to the side. A boy was doing double-footed jumps up the bleachers.
“The floor’s off!” one of the stretchers called as soon as she spotted Alden.
“Floor’s off!” almost everyone else repeated in unison.
A safety call?
He went to the storage room under the bleachers. It was a large area with signs on the wall designating it as a back-up safe zone for multiple kinds of emergency. Though the people fleeing the emergencies would have to share space with a lot of equipment.
When I was here for testing day, I saw…
There. About halfway in, along one wall, there were stacks of elemental weights for Shapers. The sandbags were piled up between refillable water bags and larger “lifemass” bags. Alden wondered what exactly those were stuffed with.
Is there a sign-out sheet for taking these, or can we just have them?
He heard the storage room door shut. He didn’t think anything of it until the boy and girl who had just entered started whispering to each other a few feet away from him.
“Can anyone borrow these?” he asked, pointing at the sandbags.
The boy—death-pale with straight black hair that hung like curtains down to his collarbones—smiled. “That depends. Are you one of us? Or are you an interloper?”
“An interloper?” Alden asked.
“Those are B-rank only bags right now,” said the girl. She had the letter B on each cheek in green paint that matched her eyeshadow, and a frizzy blonde puff of a ponytail stuck up from the back of her head.
“Oh! I’m a B. I’m Alden. I’m here for the clu—”
“BeeBee,” said the boy, “he’s ours.”
Before Alden could fully appreciate the fact that there was a B-rank named BeeBee who wore two B’s on her face for makeup, she was upon him.
“Let us teach you your duties!”
Ding. Ding.
As Alden looked around to see where the ringing sound was coming from, BeeBee grabbed him by the hand and hauled him toward a Rules and Regulations for Gym Use poster.
“Do you have bells?” he asked the guy.
The other boy’s thumbs flicked against the underside of a pair of black rings he wore on his index fingers.
Dong. Ding.
“Rings that sound like bells?”
He soon found himself with his back against a stack of alternate-surface tiles for the gym floor. BeeBee and the dark haired guy were standing next to the poster with grins on their faces.
“Repeat after me,” said the boy. “‘The A-ranks are our enemies.’”
“Uh…they are?” What kind of kooky welcome ritual is this?
The storage room door opened, and Max stepped through.
“Are you new blood or an interloper?” BeeBee demanded.
“What do you—?”
A moment later he was trapped against the floor tiles with Alden.
“All right, again,” said the guy with the bell jewelry. “The A-ranks are our enemies.”
“Enemies,” BeeBee hissed.
Ding. Ding.
“Put the names of your first victims on The Beat List,” the guy intoned.
“This is The Beat List,” BeeBee whispered. Then, she made a dramatic downward slicing gesture with one hand, and the poster on the wall behind her tore in two.
Behind it was a large chart, with the names of club members on the left and boxes full of other students’ names out to the right.
[What’s happening?] Max asked via text.
[I’m not sure. Do you think we’re being hazed?] Alden replied.
Ding. Dong.
Max crossed his arms over his chest. [I just wanted to try some things out in the gym, and now I feel like this club might be a bad idea.]
“Every B needs a target.”
“Every B—”
“Not again, you two! We talked about this!” The guy who’d just stepped into the storage room was wheeling a pair of weapon cases behind him. They were stamped with the words:
Rahul M.
Wrightwork
DO NOT TOUCH
“You weirded out those girls last time so bad they never came back to club!I’m starting to think you’re doing it on purpose to hog advisor attention.”
“We apologized to those girls!” BeeBee protested.
“They were just too weak for the B-List,” the boy with the bell rings said. He waved at Max. “Welcome. Don’t run away. We require new blood to carry on our holy purpose.”
Max was looking over his shoulder at the chart on the wall. “Your holy purpose is…making a hit list for A-ranks in your combat classes?”
“It’s very simple,” said the girl, pointing first at Max and then at Alden. “As a B, you are not allowed to suck the most in your year. There must be some A’s beneath you. The first years have been letting us down hard lately.”
“BeeBee!” snapped Rahul.
“They can’t fight for shit.”
“Francis! Get lost, you two, before I tell Instructor Plim you’re abusing the new first years!”
“You wouldn—”
“GO!”
“You’re a mean old man, Rahul,” said BeeBee, bouncing past him toward the door. “I’m gonna break your guns before you graduate.”
Francis watched her leave. “I know what you’re both thinking,” he said to Max and Alden. He made a curving hourglass shape in the air with his hands. “She’s amazing, but she’s my girlfriend. We’re madly in love. Don’t make me use these on you for real.”
He flicked his rings.
Ding. Ding.
While Alden and Max watched with equally baffled expressions on their faces, Rahul grabbed Francis by the back of his unitard and dragged him toward the door.
“I’m not threatening them, man!” he said, laughing. “I’m laying down boundaries!”
Rahul shut the door in his face, then he turned to them. “Hi! I’m so sorry about those two. Most people here are sane. I’m Rahul. Third year. I’m already taking half my classes at uni, and I graduate from high in March when I pass the final combat course. Until then, I seem to be club president.”
He shook their hands.
“So you’re our new Adjuster and our new Rabbit,” he added before they could even introduce themselves. “Instructor Plim is…enthused. I mean she’s always that way. But she’s extra that way this time around.”
Alden glanced at The Beat List. If they were really keeping score of A-ranks they’d defeated, then Francis and someone above him named Ella-Clara were not people he wanted to pick a fight with.
Then what Rahul had said caught up with him. “Is Instructor Plim the B-list advisor?”
That would be great. The Creative Applications teacher was someone he really wanted to work with, and he couldn’t take one of her classes until next quarter.
“Yes. All the other clubs keep trying to poach her. It would be a disaster for us. Fortunately, there are an abnormal number of abnormal people at B rank. And she just loves the fact that we’re mostly desperate enough to try whatever she suggests.”
He rummaged in a cardboard box hidden behind the floor tile stack and pulled out another poster and a roll of tape. He started covering The Beat List with it.
“Don’t feel pressured to take part in this Defeat the A’s nonsense unless you find it motivating. It’s not a real part of the club. It wasn’t when I started at CNH anyway. B’s in the hero track tend to be extremely studious and hardworking, but our second years are all…viciously competitive…on top of that. It might be some strange side effect of being around Ella-Clara. Don’t bother her, and she won’t bother you.”
Rahul patted the poster into place and sighed. “Sometimes I feel boring in this club. A Wright specializing in multi-object launchers should be one of the odder people in the room, but not here.”
Max cleared his throat. “During my first time applying to the school…”
Alden looked over at him in surprise.
“…the interview committee for the final round said that a B shouldn’t expect acceptance unless we had something to offer that a higher rank with the exact same subclass couldn’t.”
“It’s not an uncommon point of view. A bit of a ‘prove you’re special enough or go back to F-city’ attitude.” Rahul shrugged. “It’s understandable, so there’s no point worrying over it. I suggest you see it as a challenge to rise to.”
He knelt and started unlatching his weapon cases.
“There should be plenty of people in the gym by now. Enough to dilute the more unusual personalities. Go say hello!”
“Can I use the sandbags?” Alden asked quickly.
“Sure. In general, it fine to use anything in here as long as you’re sticking close to its intended purpose. And if you want to use things for non-intended purposes, Intructor Plim isn’t exactly difficult to persuade.”
I bet not.
Alden unzipped his suitcase and started adding sandbags. Max grabbed a box labeled Ground Drone and headed for the door. The club president spoke up again just before he reached it.
“By the way, Francis’s class clown routine is partially an attempt to put people at ease. Since he’s a Sway. I don’t know that it works the way he means for it to, especially since he’s trying to make everyone think his mind control bells aren’t scary by using them to punctuate regular sentences…well, just a warning. Have fun!”
Max’s eyes widened. “Yes. I’ll try.”
What the hell is a mind control bell? Alden wondered as he loaded another sandbag in. He hadn’t felt himself being targeted, and he hadn’t felt the need to do what Francis said, so he guessed it was all right. “Alden…if you want a heavy weight, you don’t have to fill a suitcase with smaller ones. There are 120 kilo bags on the bottom.”
“This is better I think.” The big bags looked like giant sausages, and they didn’t have as many handholds as the suitcase did. Anyway, using luggage with his skill was poetic. When he had 100 kilos, he zipped it. Then he discretely placed Joe’s enchanted ring on the ground beside the handle. “Would you mind telling me to pick all of this up? It’s for my skill.”
Rahul looked up from assembling a large gun that had some unexpectedly squishy-looking parts.
“Sure? Pick it up.”
“Thanks,” said Alden. He found the part of his affixation that controlled the number of separate protective fields he could maintain. Don’t think of it as a switch. Go for something just a little more creative.
He grabbed the side handle of the bag. That part of the affixation tried to close—an automatic setting to prevent double activation. He held it in place, trying to paper-ify the process in his mind so it would fit with his new metaphor. Like keeping an origami piece that’s been partially unfolded from snapping back shut along the creases?
He picked up the ring. He slipped it onto the middle finger of his left hand, then he stood. Both items were preserved. The suitcase was light—physically at least.
He let his attention leave that part of the affixation, and he felt it close.
Double-running the skill on objects had been absurdly exhausting on Moon Thegund, and now it was only slightly less absurdly exhausting. He was debating the merits of making it his hidden handicap.
He didn’t think he needed to hide the power level of his skill much at this point. He’d shown it off a lot during the trials, and the idea of the System granting him a fake profile was so absurd that he was sure he wasn’t in danger of provoking suspicion yet. Not accurate suspicions at least.
Humans were going to assume any additional prowess was the result of a dozen more likely factors before they ever got around to thinking, “Maybe the System lies to us about this one specific sixteen-year-old guy.”
But carrying multiple preserved objects was something he wanted to practice anyway, and if as a side effect, it made him look a little less like an outlier that was a good thing.
All right. Now stay cool, Alden, he thought as he headed back into the gym. If you drop the skill and break some part of your body with a two hundred twenty pound bag, everyone will think you’re too much of a dumbass to be allowed.
*
