“Come on and hit me, you ninny.”

Todd pinches his lips together and looks down at his [Mercury Rod] then back at Walter. The old man stands in the center of a triangle of stone steles. The rocks are tall and narrow; like obelisks but without the sharp corners or flat faces. Each of them has a spiraling ribbon of intricate facets that runs up its height, and the flowing, repeating patterns glow in a reddish hue towards their base. Walter holds his stance firmly, the last white wisps of his hair slicked down. As he concentrates, a marbled and shifting globe of purple light dimly encircles his whole body.

Frowning harder, Todd charges his weapon with an intention: with weight and hardness. It doesn’t feel right, ain’t his look. But it listens well enough to his need. He lifts a heavy swollen hammer head over his own and after a moment of hesitation, smashes it against Walter’s barrier.

The violet glow intensifies, and the liquid energy crystalizes into hexagonal plates. Todd feels a force like cracking through glass into cold molasses as his weapon lurches to a crawl. The ribbon on the stone reacts to the energy of the barrier, the red color of its light intensifying and creeping up the spiral. Then the light falls and desaturates again.

“What was that?” Walter snaps, “Cut a can of soup in a ten gallon barrel, still got more hog’n that.”

“Uh, what?”

“Yer half-hoggin!” Walter roars, making Todd jump. “Whole hog it ya’ soy guzzlin’ yoghurt lump! Hit me like you mean it!”

A quarter startled, quarter angry, and the rest all determination, Todd raises his weapon back over his head. He sets his stance wider, suffusing his arms and lower back with power and his muscles tighten like steel cords. The hammer falls, brought down like a John Henry rock-breaker, and it slams into Walter’s shield again.

Round two pushes the barrier to its limits. Like liquid crystal turns solid under pressure, hexagonal panels appear along the globe’s surface at the jolt of impact. In that first flash, it’s a tortoise shell of a defense, then the first protection yields and the hammer-fall doesn’t. But the skill isn’t beat yet, the shield panels liquify into individual swirls, each one a whirlpool that sucks inertia out of the incoming attack. In just that half second, the hammer is slowed until it could barely drive a nail; then the barrier fails and Walter crumples to the ground with a hammer tap on the shoulder.

“Shit, sorry,” Todd panics, dropping to his knees. But Walter breaks out into laughter instead.

“Sorry my wrinkled ass,” the crotchety geezer laughs. He sits up and points to the stele stone, which is lit with a slowly falling orange glow. “I got me the high score!”

The pixies’ games have been met with an enthusiasm that Todd hadn’t expected and still cant believe. Maybe it had been the stress of the previous two days, maybe it was that most folks hadn’t really had a chance to experiment with their new strength and abilities; but the atmosphere’s gone a little carnival. A couple of the older folks sit on flimsy bamboo chairs, watching the long distance runners as they pass. A few of them, and many others besides, are carrying a rough waxed paper cone filled with a lumpy curd that Todd recognizes from the original Tutorial care package. He hadn’t gathered the courage to eat much of the stuff, but apparently the other Cultivators had acquired quite a taste for it.

The real scandal though is Marketing Mike’s doing. He’d been digging through the [System] Store and discovered that there was a low grade spirit beer available for purchase. Apparently it was brewed from some rare ingredients, and was meant for restoring Cosmic Energy. That’s not what it’s being used for now though. A number of people are carrying around wooden bowls, sipping brew in satisfaction and smacking their lips.

The chairs, the beer, the food… now Todd sees some of the younger folks wearing stylish patches on their martial gis that didn’t appear to come from the quest rewards. One young woman spins in place to show off her new one-piece robe, dyed entirely in a lurid red.

How many Nexus Coins are being blown right now? Frivolously wasted on vanity junk? Todd’s blood runs cold, just knowing that each piece of furniture or clothing could have been alchemy equipment for the good of the whole subsection.

The wooden posts mark the edge of the race track, so Todd moves up to them and joins the crowd to watch. The runners are generally divided into three categories: the power trips, the don’t-you-quits, and the ol’ dipshits. The first batch is just in the race to play with their new Skills, and it’s a fun kind of mess. Randall had tried to use his fire attack as a rocket boost, which was a nimrod notion as his [Igneous Bouquet] would be useless if it blew him backwards every time he used it. Group two was in the game to win, with Joe pushing a blistering pace round the track, and sideline cheers of his name looping round with him. The dipshit brigade are more obstacles than participants, they’re fifty percent of the total alcohol consumption, and they’re eighty percent of the stupid. They holler and hoot as they jog slowly around the track, barely paying attention when they get disqualified by dipping on and off the track. Todd watches in horror as one shirtless young man shoots off fist-sized bolts of fire into the sky.

The target mannequin combat area has some troublemakers of its own, with a few dummies dressed in Earth clothing or repositioned in compromising poses. But the presence of Teo and Drew keep most of the goofing at bay, the two men grimly serious as they batter iron dolls at full force, trying to edge each other out of the first place position for the one and three strike events.

Selecting an iron mannequin further away, Todd approaches and taps it on the torso. His weapon is still shaped like a hammer, so he lifts it up and swings it hard against the metal plate. A barely visible red glow fades from the point of impact. Todd tries again, this time with enough Cosmic Energy to nearly double the power of his strike. Red again, but easier to see in the light. Reluctantly, Todd moves over to a Copper doll and tries his hammer one last time, takes it after a windup like he’s swinging for a home run. This time the glow is bright, and in the range of merigold yellow.

“You swinging a copper?” A voice calls out. Todd recognizes the man’s face but doesn’t recall a name.

“Yea,” Todd sighs, “looks like it.”

“I think you gotta hit hard enough for iron to get into the top three now,” the man commiserates.

“Mhm,” Todd agrees. He takes a few steps back, checks his distance and then points his left hand out towards his target. The lancing jet of his [Water Spear] technique streaks out with a subdued high pitched whine. It wobbles a bit at the impact point, spraying water plasm as it ricochets off the hard metal. Then to Todd’s surprise, the doll keels back and topples over backwards. Its weight brings it down with a heavy clang against the floor.

The impact glow of the attack is pretty good. Todd sees the damage is fully in the yellow range, which is better than he expected. He traces his finger along the zigzagging trail of the impact, wondering if he could might have pushed closer to the green if he’d kept the spray focused on a single point. For right now, that level of control is beyond him, so he hikes up his trousers, squats on down and heaves the figurine back upright. To some slight satisfaction, he notices that there’s a wide patch of pale red on the doll’s back, and bright red on its elbow. These things are heavy enough that simply falling is enough to hurt, nearly as much as a level one could hit for.

Out at the race track, Joe continues to dominate the race. His unflagging discipline, monstrous title bonuses, and the insights he gained into his cultivation and energy from studying with Todd and Candra have turned his body into an unstoppable machine. He’s nearly been sprinting the whole thing. However, he does have some competition. Nayira holds a commanding lead over the sprint event, with her [Magspark Rail] skill. With it, she’s able to use electricity to propel her body forward like a bullet train. Squatting low for balance and cackling maniacally, Nayira leaves a trail of yellow sparks in her dust as she passes the other runners. On the corners, she banks wide and leans low into the turn.

The long run sees her fall further behind though, as the thing keeping her out of first place is the limit to her Cosmic Energy reserves. Her skill can only carry her part of the way around the loop, and every time she runs out, Joe pulls further ahead. Nayira cusses as she’s forced to rely on her own flagging legs and stamina.

She’ll lose her second place mark as soon as Drew gets bored with the strike challenges though. Todd looks back and sees Drew angle his gladius carefully, then drive the point of his sword into the unguarded neck joint of his iron doll. A tone strikes like a ringing bell, and then a pulse of energy expels out of the sword. Wrenched from within, an awful metal squeal sounds out, and the iron deforms at the neck. From that point of failure, light spills out like blood, and it glows a bright and menacing blue before the arrays on the doll fail and the device begins to malfunction.

“Jesus,” Candra says, taking a sip of her beer.

Todd is surprised to have company, but takes it in stride. “We need to win a few of these, you know. The Doc and the others need all the resources we can get them. These prizes are going to go to waste if we let them go to just anybody.”

“Drips,” Candra warns him, with Todd realizing his given name just died a little further, “Xanax yourself a little.” She takes another sip. “It’s beer time. There’s beer. Which means you need to be drinking too.”

“I shouldn’t,” Todd protests.

“I’m drinking, so that means you’re drinking,” Candra counterpoints.

Todd opens his hands up in apology. “I don’t have a bowl,” he insists.

For a moment, he thinks he’s off the hook. But Candra raises her bowl up to Todd. She pushes the rim up to his lips, and he’s run out of ways to say no. He touches the bowl and tips it enough to sip, but she rolls her eyes and raises it near vertical. Todd sputters in his attempt to guzzle down the whole thing.

Intoxication hits the first part of his upper digestive, not just ethanol but a swirl of riotous energy. “You’re awful,” he chuckles.

“Part of my charm.”

It’s a terrible shame, did you know? That the word brown is such a knobby, ugly sounding word. It's a shame because it comes in shades and hues that deserve better, with only inadequate chestnut and mocha to carry her into poetry.

“I uh, your eyes are…” Todd burbles, scrubbing his chin with this sleeve to sop up dripping alcohol.

Candra crosses her arms and smirks. “I demand adjectives,” she advises. "You may continue."

Steeling himself against the warm sensation of alcohol, Todd reasserts his better judgement. “I noticed you got two of them,” he sighs. “I don’t want to – and I’m not assuming that you’re, ah, into uh–”

“Oh.”

“It’s just that, you know, I kind of have a thing going with Sarah.”

“Oh. Sarah. Yea. Is she?”

“The girl from my team. Yea. She's not here, and I mean it’s not official, official. But… I mean,” Todd winces.

Candra grins her way out of a subdued expression. “No no, of course. I’m just busting your chops. I didn’t mean to –”

“Because I would totally – if not for...”

“Hold your shit there Casanova, I’m just givin’ you a beer,” she laughs, “not workin’ your fuckin’ zipper.”

Todd blushes. “I got it. Sure.”

Candra looks down at her empty bowl. She clears her throat. “I’m just gonna,” she points her thumb over towards the race track. “Gonna try the sprint.” She backs away and claps the bowl against her palm. “Gonna try my magic out,” she overexplains, clipping the last syllable sharply.

The two of them say goodbye, then Todd watches her go as he walks over to the marked sharpshooter position, 60 yards from a row of positioned mannequins. Squinting his eye, rolling his shoulder and lining up his hand with a copper target, Todd glowers unhappily.

“I’m going to goddamned regret that, aren’t I?”