Rain battered the top of the skyscraper and Rick wasn't himself. He could feel the rain stinging against his bare back and the aura pulsing through his body, but something was wrong. A moment ago he had been somewhere else, the memory already dissipating, yet now he felt rage cascading down over him, as undeniable as the rain.

A city glimmered around him, the lights strangely muted and blue in the rain. They extended in all directions, obscured only by swaths of darkness from other skyscrapers blotting out the world below. He didn't recognize anything about where he was, but he could barely even look around him, instead drawn to look across the roof, where he knew someone would be standing.

The man was about his height, with dyed blue hair that seemed to glow with the lights of the city. He wore a dark combat suit that clung to his body, even where it had been ripped in several places. As Rick stared at him, the man grinned and raised a fist.

He gripped a ribbon of torn red cloth.

Instantly Rick knew that it was a piece of Melissa's robes. It was simply red cloth, and in the pouring rain it could have been anything, yet he knew. He began to run forward, letting out a wordless cry. His opponent's lips moved and Rick heard nothing, the world blurring around him...

Rick Hunter woke up in the bed of his lodge and stared at the ceiling. His heart was still pounding and he could feel his lucrima soul surging within him, seeking an opponent who didn't exist.

He hoped. Rick swatted aside the covers and swung his legs out of bed, just sitting on the edge for a while and trying to breathe. The cold wood against his bare feet helped him come back to reality, reassuring him that it had only been a dream.

Obviously it was just a dream. He dreamed every night and often woke with fragments of imaginary battles in his head. It had been nearly a year since he fought Jack, yet he still occasionally had dreams where the man's burning tattoos tore him apart. Occasionally he even dreamt of fighting Mike, including one horrifying dream where Melissa had been forced to fight him. Inventing an imaginary opponent was nothing new.

Still, it left him thrown off his rhythm. Usually his dreams faded quickly, but this one stuck with him, and it had made his lucrima soul activate even while he was unconscious. Recognizing that he wasn't going to get back to sleep, Rick strained to his feet. Early sunlight cast his cabin in subtle shades anyway.

He ran his hands through his hair, decided he didn't need to shave, and ate some cereal straight out of the box. There had been milk at some point, but his tiny fridge had run out. By the time he was finished, he felt normal again, despite the lingering dream and the early hour. When he pulled on his jacket and slipped into his tennis shoes, he was ready to start the day.

Out this early, there was a chance that he could find Delsin. The older man had been avoiding him for some time, though it was probably due to cantankerousness more than anything else. They'd spoken briefly about the Dark Blood Kettle, confirming that there was nothing sinister about its psychological effect, but otherwise the old man didn't want to be used as a source of information.

If anyone knew about dreams, it would be him. Rick had mostly put the dream behind him, but decided that he would ask anyway, just to round out his knowledge.

Meanwhile, he would begin work by scouting the edges of the Peakless Wildlife Refuge. It had formerly been exclusively Delsin's job, and joining him helped justify Rick's continued employment. That route would also be most likely to bring him into contact with the old man.

As he jogged through the forested hills that had now become familiar, Rick found his mind wandering. He didn't usually run into anything during his patrol and staying alert for the occasional surprise had become second nature. Still, for every hour he spent exploring fruitlessly, he found himself wondering about how necessary his job really was.

Originally, he had been hired by Delsin's family to deal with a jackalope infestation caused by the Global Lucrim Authority's experiments. He'd dealt with it in under a month, yet before he'd finished, there had been an atmospheric lucrim disturbance that required all hands on deck. Then after that, there had been a group of lucrim-using moles that had threatened to tunnel so much they'd collapse part of the Refuge.

So month after month, crises had kept him employed. Something else could come up at any moment, but it was also possible that he was no longer essential. If Adsila and Wemilat were only keeping him out of pity...

Rick paused and focused, extending his lucrima soul's senses as far around him as he could. The GLA's sensing technique wasn't useful in the modern world, but in the Refuge it was essential for finding things that were wrong. It had been limited at first, but Emily... Rick's mind flinched from the old sore spot. She had improved the technique, and in the months since he'd continued improving it until he could easily sense the world around him.

Unfortunately, he couldn't sense Delsin. The old man must be avoiding him again, and with his teleportation technique, he could easily do so as long as he wanted.

Sighing, Rick continued to jog around the edge. He couldn't cover the entire perimeter in a morning, but he tried to get a major swath. As he went, he continued to extend his senses into the world around him, not trying to find Delsin and just searching for anything that might require his attention.

After wandering for a time, something found him: Blue trundled through the underbrush in his direction. The aura bear was taller than Rick even on all fours, a massive beast made even more dangerous by the naturally flowing aura that made the fur on its chest bright red. It growled as it sped up, lunging into the air and bringing its paws down on his shoulders.

"Good to see you too, Blue." Rick reached out and rubbed the rough fur on the bear's belly. It bent down to snuffle at him, massive claws playfully raking along his shoulders.

The aura bear was one of the few animals that roamed the entire Peakless Wildlife Refuge, an apex predator that ignored all other territories. At least, other than the bounds of the park itself, where it would be in danger from humans. Rick only ran into the animal every few days, but once Blue had grown accustomed to him, it went out of its way to come greet him every time they were near one another.

Once, the paws the size of his head had been intimidating, but after ruining a few shirts, Rick's defensive core had begun to adapt. It had been dangerous training for a time, and now it was more precise training: the difficult part was making sure his defensive aura was strong enough to prevent his clothes from being destroyed.

"I don't suppose you know anything about dreams, do you?" Rick spoke in a soothing voice as he continued rubbing Blue's fur. It didn't really matter what he said, Delsin had just told him that the aura bear liked the sound of calm voices. "Do animals dream? That would be just the sort of question that would annoy Delsin to death. I shouldn't let it get to me. I guess it's just been too long since I've had a crisis and my mind is inventing one."

Blue growled in agreement and reached down, clamping jaws over his shoulder. Rick winced instinctively but kept talking, rambling as he focused on his defensive core so that the bear's teeth wouldn't ruin his jacket. He'd kept Lisa's gift to him undamaged so far, but an aura bear gnawing at his shoulder could overcome the jacket's ether reinforcement.

Several minutes and one undamaged jacket later, Blue let out a huff that blew Rick's hair back. That implied the bear had apparently greeted him long enough, which meant it was about to finish with its traditional farewell.

Specifically, the bear reared up to its full height, then brought its weight down on him in one smashing paw.

Having expected it, Rick crossed his forearms above his head and centered himself so the force of the blow was spread across his entire body. He could feel his shoes digging into the earth, but his defensive core held. Socialization complete, Blue dropped down onto all fours and trundled away absentmindedly.

As Rick headed back to his usual route, he found himself rubbing his shoulder and pondering the minor damage the teeth had done to his aura. Blue generated aura in a different way than humans did, though he hadn't quite figured out all the differences. Every animal he'd ever had attack him used lucrim in a slightly different way, which suggested that there must be a fundamental biological difference.

It was one of many topics that Rick was curious about, but there simply wasn't time. For the past year he'd been focused primarily on his own development, trying to prepare himself for whatever came next. Except nothing had come next. He was significantly stronger, and he was proud of how far his Graham's Stake core had come in generating his own lucrim, but right now all that strength wasn't for anything. Working at the Refuge was still useful to him, but it wouldn't be for much longer, and he had to admit that he might no longer be very useful to it.

Sometimes, when he was wandering through the forest alone, that scared him a bit. Circulating his lucrima soul came as second nature, so even training while he worked wasn't a good distraction. Without anywhere to focus his mind, he became bored, and boredom eventually led him to disturbing places.

With Melissa gone to join the Young Lucrim Artists of America, his life felt much emptier. He told himself that was normal, since his sister had been a huge part of his life for a long time. But it was more than that. For so long, his focus had been on keeping her healthy or earning her a better life. Without that goal, he was lost.

So far, his efforts to redefine himself had failed, and he often worried that was because there wasn't anything else at the core of his soul.

He loved training, but he wasn't strong enough for that to support him as a career. He didn't have the drive to start a business like Lisa. He liked ranging in the Refuge, but didn't have the passion for animals that he saw in Wemilat. He didn't want to be driven by revenge, like some. He couldn't believe in a crazy goal like Damian's efforts to overthrow the current world order. And worst of all he didn't feel happy simply existing, like Delsin and many others.

Uncle Frank said that it was just another problem from his upbringing that he'd needed to overcome. The rest of their family had never held long term goals, they'd just rushed from crisis to crisis, always trying to feed an addiction or get a little temporary comfort. Rick admitted that was probably part of it, and he'd been working on his long term planning, but he thought it was more than that.

Maybe some people just weren't built to accomplish anything.

A bolt of lightning thundered out of the clear sky and suddenly his personal problems didn't seem so relevant. Rick shook himself out of his thoughts and identified the location. Not so far away, so he began running. Though he was much more familiar with moving through the Refuge, sprinting was still risky, but he trusted his defensive core to protect him against any accidents.

Soon enough he saw it: several birds flying in anxious circles. When he reached the grove, he spotted a blackened tree trunk. His arrival made most of the birds retreat, but one lay smoking at the center of the impact point and another hopped nearby even when he drew close.

Both thunderpeckers had the dark feathers and bright yellow crests of their species. Rick didn't know them well enough to be sure if they were male or female... to him the most relevant fact about thunderpeckers was their ability to generate lightning bolts. They were lesser cousins of the near legendary thunderbirds, which he still wasn't sure were real animals instead of spiritual metaphors. Delsin had not been at all helpful in that regard.

Unfortunately, one of the birds lay on the blackened trunk, still smoking from the impact. Its wings twitched weakly and he thought it was still alive. Sure enough, he found the problem: there was a bit of metal wire wrapped around one of its feet.

Rick knelt down and gently reached out to try to unwind it. Not gently enough, because the other thunderpecker leapt to attack his hand. The thin beak was needle-sharp, capable of boring into even the hardest woods, and Rick winced as it repeatedly jabbed him.

Even when he began to unwind the wire from the injured thunderpecker, the other continued to attack. It didn't ever seem to understand that he was trying to help, it just eventually realized that it couldn't injure him. Instead it fluttered back, hopping back and forth and emitting chirps of distress.

Removing the wire was simple enough, and the injured bird twitched in relief. Rick examined it, in over his head but knowing that he had to do something. According to Wemilat, the thunderpeckers' lightning abilities backfired on them when in contact with certain metals that didn't exist in the natural world. Unfortunately, humans did use those metals, and even worse, the thunderpeckers would try to collect them. They were usually safe in the Refuge, but these must have ranged further.

Removing and manifesting a medical cage from his belt, Rick gently eased the injured thunderpecker into it, careful that its wings weren't pinched as the ether mechanism closed around it. That should stabilize it until he could get back.

Not understanding, the other thunderpecker flew directly at his face, pecking wildly. Rick stumbled back and shielded his face, since he wasn't sure his defensive core could protect his eyes from the sharp beak. After attacking ineffectually, the thunderpecker instead landed on his shoulder and began resolutely drilling into the side of his head.

Ignoring the drumming against his skull, Rick stood up and looked carefully for a nest. They bored holes into the sides of trees, but sometimes they also made nests. He dimly remembered Wemilat saying they did that only during mating season, which suggested that the two were a mating pair.

"Take it easy, I only want to h-mmmph!" Rick tried to speak soothingly, but that only invited the thunderpecker to peck at his mouth instead. He tried to brush it aside without harming it and just focused on the nest.

Soon enough he found it near the blackened tree, and also found what he'd feared: the nest had several lengths of sharp wire in it. He reached in to try to remove the wire without damaging the rest of the nest, though he couldn't help disrupting it. But he had to keep going, despite the increasing fervency of pecking, because unless he took away the wire, all the thunderpeckers in the area were in danger of scorching themselves.

Just as he got the last bit of wire and stood back, satisfied, he realized that the lucrim in the thunderpecker was shifting. Animals didn't have lucrima souls, so the movement of lucrim within them was inscrutable, but Rick had gained more of an instinct for it. And that instinct told him that he was in danger.

Too late. Another bolt of lightning seared down and for a moment his world was incandescent.

Rick stumbled into the clearing, his mind catching up to the fact that the thunderpecker had just hit him with lightning. He'd been hit with human-generated lightning before, but this felt different. He stared down at his hands, surprised that they weren't burned black. His hair wasn't even singed.

With the remaining thunderpecker flying nearby to watch him angrily, Rick slowly stumbled his way back to the central office. He might not have been injured, but that bolt of lightning had been unlike any other attack he'd ever felt. His defensive core still shivered with it, as if it had drawn the electricity into itself. Rick watched the thunderpecker cautiously, since he didn't want to take another bolt, but it stayed at a distance, its energy spent.

When he arrived, he was surprised that the sun was fairly high up in the sky. His work had taken longer than he thought. That was good, since it meant that the others would likely have arrived from their homes off the Refuge. Sure enough, one of the lights was on.

"Was that a thunderpecker bolt?" Wemilat emerged before he arrived, a look of slight concern on his face. In response, Rick jabbed a thumb at the bird still following him murderously.

"Unless there are a lot of other birds around here that summon lightning, I think so."

"Just what did you do to - oh, I see the cage. Just one moment." The young man placed his palms together and let his lucrim flow in a strange technique that Rick couldn't quite follow. Even though Wemilat was one of the Refuge's main employees, he wore his usual skinny jeans and a t-shirt with yet another obscure video game character. At least Rick thought it was from a game.

To Rick's surprise, the thunderpecker behind him fluttered to the ground. It hopped a few times, looking about, and then settled down. After one last suspicious glare at them, it closed its eyes and seemed to sleep.

"What was that?" Rick asked. Wemilat just shrugged and bent down to look at the medical cage.

"It's a sedative technique. Not recommended for regular use, but without it some lucrim-using animals will injure themselves. Hopefully that will keep it calm until we can heal its mate. Whew, looks like it took quite a blast... found some metal, I take it?"

They entered the office and Wemilat gently pulled the injured bird from the cage, checking it with a more careful eye than Rick possessed. He was unsure if he should just leave, but just then Adsila walked into the room. She was still shrugging on her lab coat, the concern on her face melting into a smirk.

"Wemy, are you literally caring for a bird with an injured wing?"

"It's a thunderpecker that shocked itself," Wemilat answered curtly without looking up.

"How sweet. Soon you'll have another little forest friend."

"Nope, it looks like it won't make it. Guess you'll get to grind it up into boner pills for fighters who can't get it up anymore."

Adsila rolled her eyes and turned to look at Rick instead. "Good on you for finding the poor thing. Did you run into any more invasive species on your patrol?"

"No, not really." Rick shifted away to let Wemilat work and lowered his voice. "I had something I wanted to ask you about."

"Yeah? What's up?"

Abruptly Rick's mind caught up to his mouth and he realized what he was doing. He had been intending to ask Adsila about whether or not dreams could have any more significance. She knew more about the mystical side of lucrim but wouldn't give him any bullshit. Yet now that question felt idiotic, the remnants of a meaningless dream, and asking her seemed insane. Her smirk was cute, but he didn't want it directed at him.

"Uh..." Rick scrambled for something else that wouldn't make him look like an idiot. "Last week we talked about the Refuge's endowment, yeah? I meant to look up more, but never did. Is that a purely financial thing? If it's actually some kind of core that generates lucrim, I'm not sure how that's different than a perpetual soul."

Adsila blinked as if that hadn't been what she expected, but recovered quickly. "Oh, they're entirely different. The endowment only exists on paper... or, on circuits, I guess. It's a bunch of stocks and bonds and things. It's all paid out in lucrim, but we just use that to fund the Refuge, so it's nothing like a perpetual soul."

"That's not true," Wemilat said from across the room. "It's a perpetual endowment."

"Oh, that label doesn't mean anything. Just that it generates enough lucrim to fund the Refuge in perpetuity, but that's entirely dependent on how much we spend."

"Wouldn't a perpetual soul be the same way?" Rick asked. When they both looked at him, he shrugged. "I mean, the idea is that your lucrima soul can generate enough lucrim to support you if you never work another day in your life. But isn't that based on how much lucrim you use in exactly the same way?"

"Maybe," Adsila said reluctantly, "but it isn't that simple. To qualify as a perpetual soul, you need a certain degree of stable lucrim generation that's self-sustaining. They're sometimes built into Birthright Cores, but you hear about Birthrighters going bankrupt all the time before Mommy and Daddy bail them out. That doesn't mean they're not perpetual souls."

"Maybe it's more complex than I thought, then." Rick frowned and started to say more, but Adsila waved his question aside.

"Your financial questions always get way too detailed, Rick. Seriously, just look it up online. There are tons of people talking about it in detail who can tell you anything you'd want to know."

He nodded, making a mental note to do just that. It might actually be effective, too. For a long time, perpetual souls were something he was aware of, but they were so far beyond him that when he did think of them, it was more confusing than anything. But he'd used a lucrim-generating core for years now and he knew far more, so perhaps he could take the next step.

Of course, even if he was a perpetual soul and an immortal, that would just buy him more time in which he wouldn't be sure what he should do.

While Rick began looking up the basics on his phone, Wemilat finished his work on the thunderpecker. It still hopped weakly, but Wemilat placed it into a more spacious cage. He then hooked it by the door and backed away. Soon the other thunderpecker woke up and hopped closer. Instead of being distraught to find its mate in a cage, it hopped around the sides of the cage, poking its beak through and chirping.

At least it didn't seem inclined to attack anyone else. Rick smiled as he watched the two birds communicate in their chirping way. He might not be passionate about helping animals, but he was glad that he'd been able to help the two of them.

"Hey, Wemy, do you want to go to the Showdown this weekend?" Adsila asked toward both of them, yet Rick thought her eyes were on him instead of her brother. He had no idea what it even was, but Wemilat rolled his eyes.

"You want to see some muscled freaks flex and crush beer cans against their foreheads?"

"It's more exciting than freaking soccer, dork."

"Soccer is an elegant sport, lucrim league or not. It doesn't worship at the altar of lucrim obsession."

Rick's eyes shifted between them as he followed the conversation, but eventually he had to speak up. "What's this Showdown?"

"You don't know?" Wemilat raised a skeptical eyebrow. "I thought most... no, never mind. It's a roaming circus of lucrim-based events, you could say. And this weekend the circus is coming to Branton. For most of a month, I think."

"That's unfair," Adsila said, tapping on her phone. "Here, I'll send you a link. Basically, the Showdown is one of the only interesting lucrim events. Not like smashball, which is just dumb and artificial. Each event in the Showdown has people who are the best in the world at something specific. And I really mean best. I don't know how we get them to come to Branton, but they come by a few times a decade."

His phone beeped and Rick found Adsila's link to the website. It seemed that the Showdown included traditional combat events as well as enhanced versions of various sports, but also more specialized events. Unfortunately, the pages with more detailed information were terribly formatted for viewing on a phone, leaving him to scroll through the glossy advertising sections.

It might have been interesting, but he found himself more troubled thinking about why Adsila had brought it up. For a moment, he'd wondered if she was indirectly inviting him out. Now, he worried that she was trying to get rid of him.

This Showdown did seem like the sort of thing that would interest him, but it also clearly advertised that it was looking for new up-and-coming competitors. It was possible that Adsila was unsubtly hinting that he should look into this or another job. As he scrolled mindlessly, Rick tried to think about how long it had been since he'd accomplished something truly important for the Refuge. He thought he earned his keep, but he could also understand if that time was coming to an end.

Then Rick froze, staring at his phone, all thoughts of such social interactions fading. All he could do was stare at the picture above the article. He barely even read the headline, something about the new generation of elites being chosen.

The man in the picture was the same one he had seen in his dream.