“As you can see, the red lines highlight their logistical network through this city,” Sokolov explained in front of a board. “The traffic cam footage places the first appearance of their trucks about a month ago, right around when the Annual began…”

Whitworth paid attention on the exterior. He was already familiar with the materials in the presentation. He was more interested in how the other members of the meeting were reacting. The police looked as they normally did, stress-lined and exhausted. Fatigue hid their reactions, though shock radiated from their thoughts. Their city had only gotten more dangerous with the introduction of these weapons.

The men in messy three-piece suits were of interest. Men of the federal bureau, the same ones who had attended Mayor Howard’s meeting. They knew about those weapons dealers and perhaps have been following them for the past while. And they neglected to inform him. It felt strange to be on the other end of secrecy. But national security was as much about what one knew and what others didn’t.

At the end of the meeting Whitworth decided to act predictably. Before the agents left for the door, he paused beside them, careful not to seem confrontational and asked if they knew what was happening in his city. They glanced at each other with poised looks.

“We’re still looking into it,” one of them replied. “We’ll update you once we have concrete information. Until then, I’d advise having more of your teams on patrol.”

“Thank you for your candor,” Whitworth said, trying not to spill irony into his tone.

‘Your teams’, his teams, Whitworth’s teams. This has always been the attitude the government agencies had towards costumed heroes. Maybe it’s an ungifted thing.

He watched the attendees make their slow spill out of the facility’s meeting room until he and Sokolov could speak in private.

“It’s legal,” Sokolov repeated what he had said in the meeting. “The lawmakers must have never thought anyone would actually do it. But it is not illegal to own a high powered automatic firearm for the purpose of defense against gifted as an ungifted, as per the Consideration for Ungifted Individuals Act.”

“It’s not as dumb as it sounds,” Whitworth said. “Bullets able to hurt gifted are very expensive, and very taxable. Our entrepreneurs aren’t making much money with the prices they’re charging. I don’t think profit is their goal.”

But it was all over local news. Ungifted underdogs defending their own neighborhood before the heroes could arrive, preventing millions in property damage. The arms dealers were getting positive press. Arms dealers. He wanted to question the mechanic with cat-2 gigantism, to find out what made him lose control like that. But the mechanic had yet to wake from his medically induced coma, his body still healing from the holes he had been riddled with.

“This is something we’re just going to have to slowly uncover,” Sokolov said. “In the meantime, have you made any progress with your little asset?”

“Hm? Oh, right.” Whitworth brought a hand to his head. “Slipped my mind.”

“Not something you want to leave alone,” Sokolov said. “She’s in the obstacle course today, isn’t she?”

“It’ll be fine,” Whitworth said. “I’ll set up an appointment with her once that game is done. Besides, she isn’t even the worst of them.”

But she could be. The games were not secretive in their purpose. They tested the students, their equipment, and gave the world a show. They also honed edges and made them stronger, sharper. The contestants would have thinned in number, and the sharks in the school would become more apparent, or be unseen.

--

They had been given a different uniform before the game had started. The fabric was adorned with M.A.G.E blue of a different stroke, signed with the numeric designation of the game. Three. Three of ten labors. The gunshot rang. The students swarmed the first path, a narrow dirt road flanked by woodland.

Lyssa lingered, not wanting to be shoved aside by the torrent. She noticed a decent number of students had done the same.

Flashes of light made her flinch, raising her arms in defense. Dirt and smoke billowed from explosions. Sometimes students flew with them. There was screaming. The announcers goaded.

Looks like some of them are out already!

How ruthless of their friends to wait in the back like that.

The mines Amelia had mentioned. A different make than those from the wars, no doubt, tuned to deliver non-lethal, concussive yields. She watched a student sitting on the dirt just ahead, gritting his teeth as he held his knee. With brutal effort he pushed with his palms until an audible pop could be heard. Then he stood and was off once again.

“I think they’ve cleared a chunk of ‘em,” Penny said. “See y’all at the finish line.” Her vines grew and hardened around her. She ran ahead on her own.

Amelia took to the air, free to use the full strength of her wings without a mouthy passenger. Missiles erupted from the ground, tracing a pale arc towards her, but they were like pigeons to a falcon.

Among her roommates, only Carrie remained with her.

“Don’t think about me,” Lyssa said.

“’Course not,” Carrie said. She took off as well, following where others have gone.

One by one the remaining students entered the course on the backs of winds, on swift feet, through solid ground, or by air. The place was noisy with the sound of gifts.

Lyssa let in a trickle of anger and grasped that emotion tight. Dark, molten skin built around her body in a heartbeat. It would be tempting to use multiple gifts at once and clear the dirt road in a moment, but then she would have exhausted her stamina. It has happened too many times before.

“Run already! Go! Go! Go…!” Sethlana raged.

“I’m in control,” Lyssa stated. She took a step onto the road and found her soles reluctant to leave the ground. The painful pinch of ice had stuck her in place. When she looked up to see what had done this, a wave of glacial ice had raced over the road, thrusting some students aside while imprisoning others. Some had their head encased and could not breathe, requiring a team of saliently dressed personnel to step out of the woods and free them. An injury prevention team of some sort.

Lyssa melted the frozen foothold and ran. Genuine, unreserved annoyance knit her brow together. She ran past a female student who had been stuck by the ice. The prevention team had only freed her head so she could breathe, but the rest of her body was still stuck in a foot of ice.

“Hey!” She called. “If you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours! How about it? Hey!”

Lyssa had run past already. She followed the approximate path left by the faster students while keeping an eye on the others doing the exact same thing. Several missiles burst from the ground, triggered despite their wary strides. One was coming straight for her. She covered her eyes and felt a wave like a full body punch strike her. It stopped her dead, but she was still on her feet. Her armor held. She took a moment to recover, then kept moving. More missiles drew pale arcs from the dirt like tall stalks of grass, their thrusters screaming with propulsion. But not as loudly as her thoughts.

It was a constant deluge of voices.

“Use me! Use me!”

“What are you doing!?”

“Dodge right!”

“Go left!”

Lyssa opened her mouth and yelled above the cacophony, a wild, unrestrained cry. She barreled through the rest of the path, ignoring the blunt pains of the explosions testing the integrity of her armor. One final detonation threw her into the air and she landed in a heap, head first on asphalt. She stood in a daze and spat something coppery. Her armor held, but she could feel tiny cracks beginning to form in its structure.

Kind of exaggerated, don’t you think? An announcer remarked.

Yeah that was just a couple hundred meters.

“Shut up!” Lyssa slapped the side of her head with a palm.

Was that at us?

Lyssa ignored them and faced ahead, where an asphalt road led to an enormous emptiness in the earth. Giant pillars erected from the bottom, each platform wide enough for two or three people. She would have to jump across them. A glance told her she would need to make at least thirty leaps. She looked off the edge. All the way at the bottom, a couple students fought off waves of skirmisher bots. Falling was not ideal then.

On the other side of the chasm, the raised barrels of anti-air cannons were poised at the ready. Couldn’t she simply fly low to the ground then? She watched other students make the leaps diligently. Maybe the ones with flight had already crossed. Lyssa made a decision.

“Eury,” she said. Her black armor flaked away. White force-fire began to glow from her hands and feet. Sethlana’s fuming retreated, and Eury’s raucous mindset began to slip into her thoughts. A corner of her mouth tilted upward in a trembling half-smile. “Let’s fly.”