NINETY-SIX: The B List, part two

NINETY-SIX: The B List, part two

96

Alden was keeping his goal for the night simple. Assuming they were allowed to do whatever they wanted with their club practice time, he was just going to use this opportunity to learn what it felt like to run around and protect himself with a burden of this size, shape, and weight. How did the hundred kilos of unpreserved sandbags trapped inside the preserved suitcase affect his skill fatigue? How did moving around with it work? Could he reliably keep his hands on it to maintain entrustment without doing something like strapping it to himself? Was it even practical to try to weaponize something like this? Being able to easily move this much weight is already so good, and its probably going to be more useful in the long run for transport instead of creating ridiculously heavy weapons. He kept thinking of how much easier something like this would have made his life three months ago. Has it really just been three months since I was hauling equipment and drums around the lab to help prep for Kibbys Great Big Boom? Less than three months. But it felt like a lifetime ago. Celena North was pretty combat oriented, even at the high school level. The constant competition and pressure from facing a wide variety of other talents was part of what encouraged people to intuit new uses for their powers, stretch their abilities, and level. But Alden was looking forward to learning a lot of the less flashy stuff more. Moving large objects. Running. Concealment. Dealing with complicated environments. Hed kill for a wilderness survival course, but wilderness survival was one thing that an Avowed almost never needed. It wasnt like you could get lost in a desert and starve to death when you had the System in your head. Maybe the university offered special classes for people who were anticipating summons? I have to check that out. He kept thinking about the big demon on Moon Thegund. The one he hadnt ever properly seen or had to deal with. He wanted to be able to survive if he ran into something like that, so combat training was good. But even if he had to fight something or someone to survive in the futurethat was just one way to die. There were a million other ways that had nothing to do with combat at all. What if the car hadnt existed? What if there hadnt been mover discs to flip it? What if the water at the lab had quit a couple of weeks into his stay? There was magic for all of that. His skill. Stats. Spells he could learn. So, Ill do whatever the school wants, but my personal focus should be filling in those gaps. He still wanted to hit something really hard with the suitcase before the practice hour was over, though. Alden spotted Andrzej sitting on the bottom bleacher. The Polish boy was holding his cudgel in his lap and talking to a girl wearing a t-shirt over her gym suit that said, Ask Me About Gympie Gympie, in black marker. Before he could head over to say hello, his interface flashed: [FLOOR ON]

Instructor Plim had set the gym to provide them with the breakdowns of their injuries for their information. The low pain setting meant a sprained ankle barely even stung. Alden ignored it, staring up as a whole shopping cart flipped up into the air and over the edge of the foam wall, taking out a section and spilling junk objects everywhere. Holy shit! What a cannonball! Francis yelled. Rahul, Rahul! called someone watching from the bleachers. Laughter was in their voice. Did you just take your own broken microwave in the face?! Luna Plim leaned over Alden with her hands on her hips. Her red hair clashed with the raincoat. Well, what was it like? she asked. It was so much fun, he said. I just wish I could have seen it a little better. Dont worry about that! She pointed up at a drone hovering around over their heads. Ive got it on film! She pulled him onto his feet. And you can try it again next week! That works, too. Welcome to the B-List! Now, about that fishing line you brought on testing day, have you considered selecting something a little easier for you to handle? Or maybe you could try

* The initial posting of this chapter occurred via Ñøv€l-B!n.