The year the team was spending at the academy was quickly passing by. With only one month left, Nate felt that it had come and gone all too fast. He had learned so much but was still anxious about his upcoming exams which would ultimately determine how much longer he would have to wait until he would be able to work as a contractor. And then there was the big tournament. Since Q week, the leaderboard had been flipped on its head. Biff and Nate were now at the top of the leaderboard, both still undefeated, each with decent enough grades to be able to stay there as well. They had taken turns at the number one spot depending on how they each did on a test the previous week. Currently, Biff was at the top, though. Nate was still confident Biff was cheating on everything, but they didn’t share classes, so he didn’t have a way to prove it and it didn’t really matter in the end.

  Team Arcane was a different matter. The team had slipped further in the rankings but was still in the top sixteen. This was important, as only the top sixteen teams would be able to compete in the Finals Tournament. The final arena week came and went so fast. Nate and the team had been doing two training sessions a day to get ready for their final match of the season, the match that would ultimately determine if they would be able to participate in the tournament.

  The day of their last team fight of the season arrived. Team Arcane arrived at the arena early to strategize after a lighter morning training regimen. The locker room had a few sterile and uninteresting rooms for this very purpose. There was a large screen that had the same functionality as a link, where teams could watch grainy, terribly shot film of their opponents and come up with plans on how they would exploit weaknesses and prepare for strengths. Nate used to be the team’s strategist before Jax joined the team. Jax had grown up watching professional fights though, and his family, being the over-analytical engineers that they are, would talk battle formations over dinner. Jax was not only their chief strategist but also their quartermaster. At this point, everything that needed to be done to get ready for a fight was done by Jax, except for training.

  Jax had loaded some recordings of Team Razor while the team got suited up. The team entered the small room with five chairs around a center table.

  “Team Razor is made up of three Lizzans, which means they are going to be only a little faster than an average human, but a lot more dexterous. Heads on a swivel at all times, as usual. Two of the team members are attuned to reaction, and the other is attuned to life—so a standard setup.”

  “This guy here." Jax said, pointing to a slightly bigger Lizzan with purple scaly skin and large teal circles, “Is the leader. He is attuned to life and has two abilities that are the polar opposite of each other. The first is a healing ray that I can only describe as a slow-moving beam of light that heals anything in its path. The other is a poison ray that operates in the same manner but is dark purple. The strategy with him is to block his healing ray, and watch out for him flooding the field with his poison rays. He can shoot a ray and have it move slowly across the field and do that multiple times, almost creating a slow-moving minefield that you’ll have to dodge to get to him. You’ll need to leave him last, and Dee will have to take him out from afar.”

  “Up next is one of his sisters. She’s a more in-your-face brawler like Nate. She manifests ice in small amounts like Dee can with rocks, but instead of throwing, she sticks to melee because of her other ability.”

  The video switched camera shots to show the Lizzan woman skating on ice that she was creating in front of her. She then proceeded to jump off and violently slash at an opponent with a long, thin sword made of ice.

  “Nate, you are going to have to lock her down, she will go straight to the backline and try to take out Lindy, she does it every time.”

  Nate looked at Lindy and gave her a reassuring nod and wink that Lindy responded to with a nervous smile. She slipped her hand around his bicep, but Nate didn’t notice as he was focused on Jax’s presentation.

  “Lastly." Jax continued, “Is the other sister. Dee, this is all you. Don’t underestimate her, but this is a rock-crushes-scissors situation. She has two wind abilities and neither of them are very strong, even more so since she is going to go up against your rock-based abilities. Her first ability is essentially just a ball of wind. It’s about as big as your rocks and has enough energy to knock you down and mess up your hair, but that’s about it. Her other ability is like her sister’s but kind of gives her the ability to fly.”

  “Flying is kind of a big deal, Jax.” Dee interrupted.

  “Yeah, well, just watch.”

  The other Lizzan woman, with all purple scales the same shade as her siblings, started running and quickly kept running up into the air. She bolted across the battlefield where one of her opponents was waiting for her. The other human combatant raised their arm, which had a crude-looking fire hose attached to it, and released a stream of water in her direction. The Lizzan casually flipped through the air and began running again through the air. She was then blindsided by another opponent that had used a quarterstaff to trip her mid-air. She quickly fell to the ground in a daze and her opponents took the opportunity to eliminate her from the fight.

  “She can only run through the air as long as she is moving. Otherwise, she falls and usually knocks herself out. That’s about it, guys. Any questions?”

  “Not from me. Great work as usual, Jax.” Nate said as he got up.

  “No, good job, runt.” Dee said, rustling the fur on Jax’s head.

  “Team Arcane, Team Razor, please make your way to the Connection Chamber.” a calm voice said over the locker room intercom.

  “Alright, heads in.” Nate commanded.

  The team huddled together and put their heads together and rested their arms on each other’s shoulders.

  “Nothing we haven’t done before guys. We got this.” Nate started.

  “I don’t want to get stabbed today, so if you guys could help me not get stabbed then I’d really appreciate it.” Lindy added.

  “Sure thing princess, no stabbing.” Dee added.

  “It’s just that these guys don’t look like they have anything that will really end it quickly and stabbing is just so painful.” Lindy whined.

  “I got you.” Nate said, squeezing her shoulder.

  The team broke their formation and filed into the virtualization chamber with Team Razor. Nate always thought it was weird that they had to share a room with people they were about to get in a very violent confrontation with but they hadn’t had any problems up to this point. The teams hooked up, laid down, and closed their eyes.

  Nate opened his eyes to find himself in front of the gate opening to let him out onto the arena floor. He was in his virtual body now, but he never got over the fact that there was no discernible difference between his actual body and this one. The arena was a level of magitech he was sure he could never understand. The gates opened, and Team Arcane walked out onto the field, waving to their fellow students who were cheering them on, including Jax, who was now in the stands so he could watch the fight live.

  Team Razor exited their tunnel, but to fewer cheers. The two teams had an equally important reason to win this fight: Team Arcane was one loss away from being kicked out of the Finals Tournament, and Team Razor was one fight away from moving up in the leaderboard to get into it. Nate was determined not to let Team Razor take their spot, however. He locked eyes with Team Razor’s male Lizzan healer. He was smirking back at Nate with very small but hundreds of razor-pointed teeth.

  The announcer had finished his usual spiel that Nate had heard so many times before and had started his countdown. The horn blared, and both teams leapt into action. The Lizzan sisters took to the air with their respective abilities but arced their path to come in on the flanks of Team Arcane. The Lizzan brother ran straight down the center before he stopped midfield and formed a cloudy purple haze that started slowly moving towards Team Arcane’s position.

  "Audible!" Nate cried. This was a signal for the team to flip their strategy to the reverse of what they had come into the arena planning. Nate locked onto the Lizzan sister running through the air and waited for her to get closer, keeping an eye on the deadly poison cloud heading his way. Like a cat ready to pounce, he saw the moment he’d been waiting for. The Lizzan woman stopped gliding through the air and raised her hands to conjure and launch an air ball at Nate.

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  For the number of times Nate had fought in the arena over the past year, no one seemed to ever really plan for his warp step ability properly. There was one time he caught a roundhouse kick to the abdomen from someone who decided to just wildly kick the air and just happened to land the hit. But, this was not one of those times, however, as Nate appeared above the Lizzan woman with his hands gripping his spear tightly above his head and then swung down as hard as he could, empowering his blow with his shield. The Lizzan fell downward with accelerated speed before stopping suddenly as she hit the hard metallic surface. Nate warped down next to the corpse and waited for it to disappear before turning to survey the current status of his team and the other combatants.

  Dee and Lindy were hunkered down behind Lindy’s barrier ability while the other Lizzan sister was circling around them on her floating path of ice. Instead of going in for a melee attack, the Lizzan was pelting the girls with icy daggers from afar. Team Razor had clearly done an overhaul of their strategy in a last-ditch effort to put Team Arcane off balance going into this critical fight. So far, it was not working. Dee and Lindy were hardly in any danger as the Lizzan woman was so unpracticed with throwing daggers that Dee was actually catching or blocking most of them with her rock hand.

  Lindy stood up as the Lizzan came around for another barrage and shot her goo cannon at the Lizzan’s feet, causing her to slip and tumble off her path of ice and fall to the ground. She hadn't fallen far, but was still startled and confused when she looked up to find Dee charging her head-on. She stood up and summoned her icicle sword, ready for a melee confrontation when the rocks started flying. Small pebbles started pelting her at high speed, putting her off balance as she tried to block them with her sword. Dee caught the Lizzan off balance as she tried to slash at her with her sword, but Dee caught it with her rock hand and punched her across the face with the other. Taking a fist to the face didn’t knock her out, but it did knock her down. Dee was coming down with a rock encased fist this time when the Lizzan stabbed up with an icicle. Both women landed their blows, but were left laying next to each other on the ground on the verge of virtual death.

  Lindy left her barrier to try to save Dee but was too late as she watched her take her last breath. The icicle had pierced her heart, and there was nothing Lindy could do. Dee’s virtual body faded away while the Lizzan was still breathing through a face that had totally caved in. Her body wouldn’t vanish until it was dead, so Lindy decided to help the process along. She stomped her foot directly into what remained of the Lizzan woman’s skull, ending her virtual life. Lindy looked away and turned to see Nate staring down the only remaining member of Team Razor.

  The Lizzan brother started to move his hands in front of him in large circles, which quickly created a cloud of poison between him and Nate. Nate simply watched as the Lizzan continued to do this while rotating in place until he was encased in a dome of poison that continued to get bigger and thicker as he rotated his arms and body, covering every possible point of access to him. Even though he was creating a toxic cloud of death, he kind of looked like an idiot doing it Nate thought.

  Nate warped next to Lindy. “Wish we had Dee right now.”

  “Yea." Lindy replied. “What are we going to do about this guy?”

  “Let me go check something real quick.”

  Nate warped towards the poison cloud and enveloped his hand in his shield, but, even though he had his shield up, when he put his hand into the poison cloud it began to blister immediately and turn a deep red as his skin started to melt away. In horrible pain, Nate warped back to Lindy, where she lathered her healing balm over his hand. After a little time, the pain subsided, and his hand was back to normal. This was another instance in which his seemingly impenetrable shield ability showed true weakness, abilities that didn’t seem to be made of matter seemed to have no problem penetrating Nate’s repulsion shield.

  “Okay, I have another idea. Soak my hand again.” Nate commanded.

  Lindy, without questioning, quickly soaked his hand in her goo as she noticed the corrosive cloud was starting to fill the entire arena.

  Nate warped back to the edge of the cloud and stuck his hand in once more. This time, it took about 20 seconds before Lindy’s goo was naturally absorbed into Nate’s skin, and the excess dripped off like a watery lotion. Once the goo was gone, the poison, acid, whatever this was, started to disintegrate his hand again. Nate warped back to Lindy in a hurry as the purple cloud was starting to fill the arena..

  “Okay, Linds, you need to cover my whole body in your goo.”

  “How do I even do that? That horrible cloud is almost here, Nate!”

  “Like you did when you first put on your cannon, remember? Shoot me, but like… everywhere.”

  Nate was getting nervous as the cloud was approaching slowly but steadily.

  “We only have one shot. Once you’re done with me, cover yourself too. I’ll try to be quick, but it might save you a few seconds of pain.”

  Nate stepped back and winced as Lindy held up her cannon and started firing her goo at Nate, covering every inch the best she could.

  “Okay, go!” Lindy shouted.

  Nate warped toward where he thought the Lizzan would be. The goo started to absorb into Nate’s skin slowly, and in some spots where there was only a thin layer, the wet, almost lotion-like feeling was replaced with a faint burning that began to grow. That’s when Nate saw him, the brother.

  Nate warped and swung his spear at the Lizzan but was blocked by a shield that unfolded from his arm like a Japanese hand fan. He warped again and swept the Lizzan’s legs from under him, fighting through the searing pain growing all over his body. He beat down on the shield, empowering his spear with his own shield ability until he finally swung his spear from the side and knocked it away.

  The Lizzan’s eyes were filled with terror as he saw what his poison ray had done to Nate. Nate looked like a zombie out of a horror movie with the best makeup job ever. This wasn’t a costume, or makeup, though. Nate’s skin was peeling off of him. One of Nate’s eyeballs fell out of its socket and onto the Lizzan, causing him to scream. Nate, nearly dead, put all of his weight into his spear and threw himself down onto his opponent, plunging the business end of his spear into his chest.

  The Lizzan screamed from the pain before pulling the spear out of his chest. He gasped for breath as his lung started to fill with blood and tossed the spear to the side. He started to heal himself, letting his poison field get further away since he was no longer spraying it everywhere.

  Feeling better, he looked around wondering why the horn hadn’t gone off calling for an end to the fight. The missing sound of the horn was replaced by the sound of liquid dripping onto a metallic surface. He turned to see Lindy, covered in a thick layer of her own goo, holding Nate’s spear, ready to stab.

  The Lizzan panicked and started shooting his purple rays at Lindy, but it was too late, she screamed and charged forward, plunging Nate’s spear into the Lizzan’s gut. She stabbed him again in the center of his chest as he fell. Once he was on the ground, she stabbed his lifeless body until he disappeared. The air horn blew, and Team Arcane was pronounced the winner.

  ***

  “We have to train more." Nate said grumpily, arms folded, leaning against a locker in his changing booth. “We gotta do more study on our opponents too, Jax.”

  “Nate, there was no way we could have known that the purple cloud ray poison stuff would have gotten through your shield.” Jax replied.

  “Yea, and we might have not been in that situation if you hadn’t called the audible! I was the one who ended up getting stabbed instead of Lindy. No offence princess.” Dee added angrily.

  Lindy shrugged, happy she didn’t have to endure a stabbing today. She then deflated thinking of Nate wanting to train more, and harder. “Ugh, Nate, we’ve worked so hard. Don’t you think we could just get some ice cream tonight?” Lindy said, exhausted.

  “No!” Nate shouted. “We have the tournament now, and the teams there are going to be even-”

  He was interrupted by Dee. “I second ice cream. Plus, she saved our ass today, so, hero’s choice.”

  The team, now out of their changing booths, looked at Lindy. She folded her arms defiantly, looking at Nate with a look that clearly communicated she was expecting him to fold. Nate didn’t say anything but lifted his hands up in acquiescence to the team’s desire for ice cream. Lindy smiled and got up and left, followed by the others.

  The team arrived at the dining hall where Lindy made herself a towering cone with at least 10 swirls before closing the tap producing a flopped-over pointy crest. Dee and Jax had more modest-sized cones, while Nate did a couple of swirls and sat down, sulking a bit. His disappointment started to dissipate quickly though as the ice cream touched his tastebuds.

  “So, have your guys’ sponsors talked to you about the draft at all?” Jax started.

  Lindy spoke up first as she was intimately enjoying her ice cream. Her frustration washed away with the touch of ice cream to her tongue just as Nate's had. “My Uncle called me the other day and said he’d seen a couple of the big corps reach out, but he said that was typical. Said he wouldn’t see anything real until at least after this week and maybe even the tourney weekend.”

  “What are the corps?” Nate asked.

  “There’s like ten or so corporations that do a bulk of the contract work for the galaxy. They gobble up most of the graduates, offering decent pay for more routine jobs.” Jax answered.

  “What about you, Jax?” Nate asked.

  “Well, a friend of my parents, an Uncle really, is my sponsor, and he hasn't said anything serious has come through yet either.” Jax answered with air quotes around the word serious.

  “What about you, Miss Dee?” Nate asked.

  “I don’t talk to my sponsor. We made a deal that they would sponsor me to get me here, but they wouldn’t have to do the work. I’m just going to wait for the open fair after finals to see what I can land. And you, our glorious leader? The offers must be flowing in for you, no?” Dee asked, flipping the conversation on Nate.

  “Actually, I haven’t heard from my sponsors at all. I trust them though.” Nate answered confidently.