Led gave us no more time to think, directly knocking out Spotlight, then he went for Payback.

I tried to intercept, but he danced around me.

I could still follow his movements tough and went to attack him.

He flipped me over, away from him.

I impacted the ground and immediately spun around, only to see the roundhouse kick LED was throwing into Payback’s chin.

It was insane. His focus was perfect.

I could see everything happening, how the force of the kick was perfectly calculated to just knock Payback out and not break his neck.

His eyes met mine and I could tell he was also thinking much faster than normal.

We had a stand off second. Swordjuice had created her shroud. It was a weaker shroud than the ones she used the other day, but still it would protect her. She threw me a pill as well, which I caught in the air.

“Yeah, you win.” LED said sigh a sigh.

“No fighting?”

“No need to fight where the result is obvious, you know.”

“Why did you knock those two off then?” I asked, confused.

“Well, we need to take it seriously, right?” LED said, shrugging.

I shook my head, “sure man.”

We had to wake the other two up, Spotlight getting really mad for a second but calming down, eventually.

Now we had a little while to plan what to do. Payback was rubbing his head.

“Really guys, I think I’ll opt out. It would be a bad idea to use my powers and then not be able to heal you all again.”

I thought it over and he was right. It was better to keep that kind of power in reserve.

“Yeah, it’s a shame man, but that’s alright. You can be here to heal anyone if they hurt themselves badly”

“What if no one gets hurt” Swordjuice asked, concerned

“Ah, it’s fine. Even if I came for no reason, I like hiking.” Payback answered her with a laugh, “you’re worried about the wrong things there.”

“Okay, so our plan will be simple. Swordjuice buff all of us. It protects and serves to raise our attack power. Then I distract LED while Spotlight goes for the finishing blow.”

“Sounds solid”

“Okay then”

“You guys ready?” LED asked

“Hmhum”

“Okay then, what you all waiting for.”

We nodded to each and Swordjuice gave me and Spotlight a little boba. It easily exploded in our mouths, creating a covering around our forms from a sheen layer of cutting force.

She used the blunt one on herself for protection if LED went for her.

We ran for it straight towards LED. me in the middle as Swordjuice and Spotlight fanned one to each side, Swordjuice would help me in the attack and to distract led while Spotlight disappeared from his attention.

We arrived at LED and started swinging away, the extra time to think made me more effective in my fight with Swordjuice but LED could think in the same speed, his reflexes honed to the extreme, the last time we fought we were evenly matched, now I had gotten even stronger so I could push him back.

It could also be Swordjuice, effectively harassing him, making her impossible to be ignored.

Spotlight appeared behind LED, a savage elbow strike aimed at his head. Our ambush seemed perfect until the last second LED took hold of spotlight elbow.

Spotlights eyes widened he whispered a how before being jabbed in the face,

I pulled the cutting shroud away from my knee and knead led in the abdomen, sending him flying away. And pursued after him. He was with one of his hands bleeding.

Spotlight held his nose grimacing, “ah I see how it is.”

“You got it?” Swordjuice asked him.

“Yeah, let's do the same again.”

I kept fighting LED, who couldn’t do much to me and had to avoid my attacks to not get cut, while I had no problems taking his attacks.

Spotlight appeared again, this time touching a finger to LED’s temple “got you’

“I knew it was just a matter of time. Have you learned something, Spotlight?”

“I learned that you’re a fucker, LED.”

Led laughed at the enraged Spotlight. “you need to know how it is. Some people have ways of dealing with your misdirection.”

“What is it you did exactly led?” he asked, sighing and letting the rage go.

“One of my enhancements lets me focus in more than one thing at once, actually focus.”

“Ooh, I see he didn’t block everyone just you, so he might’ve though the extra attention was just someone else.”

“Yeah,” Spotlight confirmed, turning to spit on the ground. “Are we gonna keep beating ourselves or what.”

“Well, you two still didn’t fight against everyone else. Come on, who wants to go now.”

“Ill go first to take it out of the way Spotlight said”

Spotlight wasn’t where he was a second ago, immediately starting the next bout.

Okay, his power’s tricky to deal with. Can I do the same thing LED did?

I used my enhanced thought speed to come up with a solution quickly. I couldn’t make more than one focus point. It was something that I’ll try to copy when I interact with LED’s power. What I had was the passive attention detection, and something Spotlight didn’t block was his own attention.

I focused on all the threads on me, feeling it so close to reality, to my mind. I just went one by one till there was one I couldn’t meet from where it was coming from. It felt like my mind was trying to run a steep incline slicked in oil.

I didn’t need to see him, though. I jumped in the attention's way blocking LED from his attack.

The sharp outline of Spotlight's body, caused by the still active shroud Swordjuice had given him, bit into me, but I ignored it as armor formed over me.

I held onto whatever I could grasp.

“Its over.” I said, feeling my hand closing around something.

I could finally focus again on Spotlight’s form, his arm held tightly in my grasp.

“You’re a fucking cheat Matrix, but I’m glad you’re on our side.”

“Lets do the second part then?” LED asked.

“No,” Spotlight brushed it off, “there’s no point Matrix found a way to counter me”

He seemed bitter about it, but I guess it was his thing. “Want to go before me then, Swordjuice?”

“I don’t know if I want to. With you serving as tank, there’s not much of a point Matrix.”

“Hmm,” LED said, “that’s okay, Swordjuice. Let’s do the rest tomorrow,” he looked at the sky, “we still have to walk more than an hour to the base, so let’s wrap things up.”

“Yeah hat sounds okay, I think it was going to get dark soon.” Payback said from where he was watching us all fight.

“But that no reason to run from the exercise Swordjuice. Use today to prepare and try your best tomorrow.” LED said to Swordjuice.

“Okay LED, I’ll do so.”

We returned to the base, talking about the fights and how we all could work together, it was fun, even knowing that we probably wouldn’t be working together in the future, like in the next mission with maybe only me and LED remaining together, it was nice, and we were all Dawnbreakers, there would be other opportunities for us to fight together.

Inside the Under Barn, I helped cook dinner today and then ate it with everyone. It was a nice that everyone sat to eat together at the same time. It really drove home that all of us were a unit. Maybe it was purposeful. But it’s good, so shrugs

I asked led to meet me tomorrow morning as I wanted to see his powers again. He accepted, saying that he would get breakfast with me.

I was sitting in the cafeteria with led, having just made a tether with his matrix. LED’s power was one I had already tried copying as well, having only got so close as to get some improvements. It really amped my fighting capabilities at the time, but now I was hoping to get something more tangible, maybe.

I entered LED’s power, seeing his matrix in its entirety. I had already interacted with it before, but now I could see and feel much more. It was separated neatly into two areas. One contained the matrix for his buffs,

what made them tick, and the other was the area that expelled them, that was what I gathered at first glance, it also had a feel to it not dissimilar to one led gave off himself, a quiet certainty but maybe that was me feeling his matrix even while I was focusing on my body

LED powers were deceptively simple. It always had that little mystery of why it could help with awakenings and now I could find out, his powers laid down before me, I could parcel through each section of it.

I was getting more proficient at this, when before I had to parcel through what seemed long and completely unintelligible explanation of how to transform a metaphysical energy into physical material written in general ideas instead o words.

Now I could take a metaphorical step back and understand somehow what the intent of each section was, making the power change from a puzzle made of atoms to one made of tiny Legos, the faster processing speed my mind run on and the way it felt more natural being connected with my matrix certainly helped as well.

Even then, I had to go over it again and again to make sure I was understanding everything right. It was fascinating.

LED power created from its matrix new fractals of meaning, the first time I had seen a power other than mine doing this, they were a copy of sections of his power that dictated how to enhance certain aspects of himself, his strength his mind and his energy levels, something like that.

It was the skeleton of his buff. The packet of matrix he created was then fed a supply of energy and disconnected from the rest of it, it was a separated piece of power.

It had information on how to enhance a human with the particular aspect LED put into it, then LED’s powers gave it an extra push, putting the second phase of his power into action.

Because LED’s abilities were not in fact internal, and so his matrix pushed out a tiny piece of the magic software that the matrices are. Creating a pen drive of power into the real world.

It manifested as a light construct that had instructions on how to latch in a physical body and integrate itself with a person’s matrix.

It worked in people without powers as well because it bought with it its own battery, it couldn’t connect with a power source, it didn’t bring those instructions and it wouldn’t be able to even if it did.

If someone already has a power, its source is occupied already, I can only use another power into my core because I can manually untangle my original power from it.

Anyway, it was amazing. It meant that the reasons it helped with awakening were that people had dormant matrices after all, or some people did, and the ones that did or got lucky The temporary matrix would nudge the dormant ones into activation.

Now I really wanted to watch it happen, maybe creating a connection with Victor and making LED buff him? could I use it? I wouldn’t get much use of it. It doesn’t transform my body, it’s not something I can pass up on though, so I’ll gladly take how it makes matrices into manifested light that could come in hand.

It is its core theme though, so it’ll be less effective for me to use.

I don’t plan to use it in battle anyway, so that fine. It would be interesting to see if I could put new enhancements into LED, like I’m building a library of transformations for me but for buffs instead of him.

He had something like that, but with only the three core aspects, concepts, that he could then combine, and now using Swordjuice’s ability to differentiate concepts and use them as material I could add them into my matrix as well now in a complete form. LEDs power is not just interesting, it once again helped me get stronger.

I opened my eyes. LED was still eating comfortably. “got anything?” He asked after swallowing;

“A lot man, turns out the lights you create are a manifestation of your matrix”

“What, you mean the building blocks of powers that you see in people?”

“Yeah, here’s how it works; you know the three base buffs you can create, right?”

“Yeah, magenta, cyan and yellow.“

“So what you do when you put them on someone is that your power can expel them with some energy, setting them to clamp onto someone, reach into their matrix and make them capable of using the enhancement for a little while.”

“Oh, so that’s how it works.” LED nodded, creating a ring of light and changing its colors to different hues.

“That’s something I wouldn’t be able to guess just by looking at your power matrix, that you can combine any portion of them into a single enhancement.”

“Well, it took me a long while to get to this point of mastery,” LED said

“Hm I see, maybe mastery is something my powers don’t automatically carry over, which makes sense.”

“But you can create the base buffs, right?”

“Yeah, it isn’t efficient for me to do though, but I got the buff itself permanently now,” I smiled, sharing the new advancement that I just got.

“It’s crazy how you surpassed everyone in like a month Matrix.”

“Yeah, I got lucky”

“No, we got lucky that you’re not an evil motherfucker.”

I chuckled, “yeah I guess you can look at things that way.“

"Would you try to buff Victor another time? I want to see how it interacts with him being powerless.”

“Oh, that’s a great idea. I’ll help for sure. If we can figure out more of how powers work, even how to make awakening more reliable, it could be a game changer.”

I nodded, understanding completely the allure of that. In a short while, we’d know if we had one of the most desired things for any organization, creating powers.