Lyssa’s eyes opened underneath a nest of wood and bent girders. Gradually, she remembered dodging one metal fist only to be met immediately by another. The impact had thrown her into a collapsed building. She raised a hand and exerted the steel away, thrusting it aside. Unbridled chaos unfolded before her. Dozens of students hurled their gifts at a single mech. Streams of fire blazed towards the machine, turned away with a flick of a projected barrier on the mech’s forearm. Beams of frigid energy built mounds of slowing ice on its joints and legs, only to be shattered as the machine sprung free. Students with strength oriented gifts were simply tossed like ragdolls.

“You’re all running around like headless chickens!” Tobias’s filtered voice boomed from somewhere in the mech’s head.

Dense fog suddenly developed around its legs, pooling upward. Lyssa heard Eden shout, “Now!” The student with the full body fire gift shot a jet of flame into the cloud. Lyssa had to shield her eyes from the flash of light. A thunderous wave rattled the innards of her ears and she was knocked back into the hole she had climbed out of.

A patter of footsteps skidded to a halt in front of her.

“Come on, get up!” The speedster said, extending a hand.

Lyssa took it and returned to her feet again.

“What do we do?” She asked.

“Dunno. Can’t do anything against that thing. Tried. There’s a layer of its armor that absorbs vibrations. Suggest evacuating.”

And then he was gone, ripping down the asphalt as though on fast forward. Meanwhile the smoke in the battlefield cleared. The mech surfaced from the grey obscurity covered in soot.

“Oh no,” Tobias said, “my paintjob! Try harder!”

His pauldrons opened, revealing hundreds of tubes. A metal storm of missiles swarmed into the air, gracefully arcing down towards the students. A few of them found Lyssa particularly enticing.

She panicked. Her body froze while her mind raced.

“What do I do? What do I do?”

Be creative.

A shroud of calm draped over her. Lyssa felt Izanami’s influence enter her hands. The missiles spun through the air like a drill, approaching at breakneck speeds. She would not be able to dodge. She did not plan to. The closer they were, the stronger her metallokinesis. She could see the tips of the explosive, the missiles’ fins, the fine definitions of its contrails. When it was a second away from impact she took one step to the side and grasped the tubular hulls with electromotive force, spinning the missiles around her like a ball on an invisible string. She let go when their vectors had been turned one eighty degrees, returning the missiles back to sender.

Concussive blasts popped harmlessly off the pauldrons of the mech.

“Here’s a pop lesson,” Tobias said. The mech began to stomp its way towards her, ignoring the continued assault from the other students. “If you’re alone, don’t make yourself a target.”

Rivers of gravel loosened with every encroaching step. Lyssa raised her hands and pushed. The closer it came, the harder she could push, but still it barreled towards her. A train with faulty brakes. She would not be able to stop it.

“Think,” she said to herself. “What can I do?”

Tobias was five steps away.

Her claws? No. If she could melt through the mech’s armor at all it would be too shallow. She did not have time. Its momentum would crush her.

Four steps.

Hide? Hide where?

Three steps.

She could redirect its fists with metallokinesis. But Izanami had already returned to her room. Lyssa’s control over that gift was borrowed, and poor in comparison.

Two steps. The mech’s shoulder wound back, its fist clenched.

Lyssa felt cornered. Helpless. Just like that time in middle school. Trapped between the walls and their jeering. How had she escaped then?

Finally.

“Who’s there?” Lyssa stood in the antechamber of the meager order in her mind. Above her, projected in the glass dome, the mech was one step away. Its fist had been swung, but its trajectory was as slow as a sloth.

You remembered me.

“I don’t… are you one of me?”

The elevator announced its arrival. The cage doors slid open. Lyssa saw herself enter the hallway, walking towards the center of her mansion with alien grace. The self wore flowing black ribbons, floating away from her skin. They were in motion, always away, following no direction but their own. Her hair was black, but slicked back, as if she stood perpetually against the wind.

You made me to help you.

“I remember you.”

Let me help again.

--

Tobias had not aimed the mech’s fist to land on the student, just a foot beside her. That was a failing condition: the deliberate miss. Their FASE suits would ping the ‘Fail’ status and glow red, and Lyssa would not get the credit for this session. He wasn’t worried; all students would get plenty of chances to accrue enough to pass. But when the dust settled there was nobody there.

“Warning,” the mech’s computer blared. “High temperatures detected on right leg.”

He turned to the starboard camera cluster and saw Lyssa trying to sear through his armor into the mech’s servos. He swung the leg, but hit air. The marks on his armor was still hot.

“Bring up high speed camera footage,” he said.

The other students had caught up to him. He inputted instructions on a keypad with his left hand. His mech responded, casually parrying their abilities. With his right, he scrolled through the camera logs frame by frame.

One moment she was there, the next she was gone.

“Bring up sensor logs,” he said.

No radiation burst, so not teleportation. Sensors recorded a massive barometric change and the cameras saw a blur.

“Warning.”

Heat on top of his mech. He swung his arm to reach for it. Mechanical digits tightened around nothing, as he expected. Meanwhile, the other students were beginning to make a dent on his armor. He turned on his speakers.

“Time for phase 2!” He shouted.

He slammed the mech’s right arm into the ground and activated the resonance amplifier inside his cockpit. He took a deep lungful of air and roared.

--

The ground seemingly turned liquid from the earth shattering wave that erupted from the mech. Close range gifted were tossed into the air, easy pickings for the mech’s left fist. Only a handful of students remained. The rest were still recovering.

“Fucking hell we’ve thrown everything we had against that thing,” Eden said, coughing.

“We need to retreat.”

Eden turned his head to see Marin rise out of the ground.

“Hold your breath,” she said. She grabbed him and together they sank into the ground.

One by one she pulled her classmates through solid ground to the far side of the testing arena. She could move no faster through ground than air. It was slow going. Not to mention she had to wait until the mech’s attention was taken elsewhere.

Marin stalked around a corner in wait. The nine-foot-tall goliath among their class was the latest opponent for the mech while the others recovered. There was a chance to get another one out. She swam through the ground and surfaced beside the tired classmate.

“No time to explain,” she said. “We should regroup and-”

“That’s a useful gift,” he said.

“What?”

“I’ll help.”

He slapped her hand, then he too sank into the ground. Marin blinked for a moment before continuing onward, pushing the confusion to the back of her mind.

--

“Warning.”

“I got it,” Tobias said.

“Right shoulder servos significant heat damage.”

“Reroute power to secondary actuators.”

“Circuits disconnected. Electromotive force exceeding threshold.”

He turned the shoulder cameras on and saw Lyssa again, perked on the shoulder of his machine, ripping it apart like a mouse to his elephant. Hot plates of armor covered her arms. Electric arcs danced around her wrists. Her feet was covering in black mist trails. Tobias tried to grab her again, if only to get her off of him. As usual, she vanished in a dark blur.

“You seeing this?” He spoke through his thoughts.

“Have been for the past few minutes,” Whitworth said into his ear from far away. “Was wondering why you were having trouble with them.”

“Who is this kid? She was a mess in the beginning of the test.”

“We’ll just have to see. Try your best. I’m having fun watching.”

“Yeah I’ll bet.” Tobias grit his teeth and turned on his speakers again.

“You’ve finally made this interesting!” He shouted. “Time for phase 3!”