“We are all friends here, united in our purpose.” — line from Episode#8, Surrounded, of Icarus Clone

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The press of bodies milled beneath him, generating a surplus heat that was not unpleasant, but he was standing above them, wasn't he? Below would be several degrees warmer.

The steel walkway groaned as he shifted, one foot to the other.

“What a party!”

Soleri shrugged.”Some party,” he repeated.

“Oh come on. We’ve got booze, drugs, men and women—“

Martin pushed himself up on the balustrade in a quick movement, falling head down, his Chassis manifesting around his falling form.

He flipped around, midair, knees absorbing the impact of the fall. He fashioned a veil of light around himself and strode through the bubble his entrance had made.

He elbowed people out of the way, pushing with his shoulders uncaring as to what they thought. In his invisible hand, a rose star sparked, choked into non-existence with a will.

The endoauric came easily to him. In the last two weeks he had woken to a shredded bed, splintered tiles in a sauna, pink energy seething uneasily like foxfire from a fairy tale.

Chevalier’s words.

He strode up to the bar, dismissing the veil and his Chassis, the latter first as to call less attention to himself.

The bartender nodded to him.

“Liquor,” Martin called, transferring the payment via handheld. Once, this transaction would have required paper. Fragile, easily counterfeited paper.

He downed the shot, enjoying the burn. It wasn’t pleasant, but then that wasn’t what he was going for.

He was angry- and didn’t need pink energy-emanations around him to know it. He recognised that old sentiment. Judgement was a bitter thing to stomach- especially when it was unearned.

He took another shot before walking away.

The contents of his…altercation with Chevalier were sealed. Raja Sviratham’s words were explicit, as had been Coastline’s. Soleri respected their hardheaded instructor, but respect could only reach so far. It was Coastline’s words that stayed his hand, and more, his mouth.

“Claire Chevalier will get her due, as will you. But you will have to be patient.”

In the meantime, Martin felt stuck. The research into his Chassis was on-going, but so far he was reading about various Types of Chassis, not actually doing anything.

His peers in the class of 2095-13 were treating him like dirt; it was one thing for him to be from a ‘provincial camp’, but that fact in combination with Chevalier mysteriously disappearing after confronting him…it painted an image that burned him. It shouldn’t.

Twice she attacked him; drawn blood even. His fingers sought the edge of his jaw, tracing a line. In the aftermath of their…altercation, Coastline had healed him. The physical wound was gone, at least.

He walked through the festival precinct on Level 4, trying not think of the unfairness of it all. He had shouted the truth from the rooftops, but the only people who believed him were those who were his friends or accquantances. Calix, Sonnentag and Somchai. Others, like the Guos were leery of him. Westerfield, he thought, didn’t care either way.

Somaronov had said nothing—bound by the same strictures as he, yet a person could speak without opening their mouth and hers was a damning silence.

He wasn’t naive to think the prejudice against the camp-born would vanish just because they were all Proxies-to-be, but…no, that had perhaps been it. That, when faced with the training to become the first line of defense against the Host, the old structures would melt away.

All it took for that illusion to die was a single shake. Him against Chevalier. And then the house of cards went down. It galled him— yet in a way, wasn’t this what he wanted to change?

Still, killing Host seemed by far the easier thing than trying to change the current lay of the world.

He leaned against the wall of a pagoda, admiring the purple synth-bricks of its tiered ceiling. Why…why did it have to be so hard? If this had been a story, they would have resolved their differences and Chevalier would have branded her sword like a character out Icarus Clone.

He kicked away from the wall, sending a message to Calix via a handheld clipped to his waist. It had been a good attempt. But partying, the booze, the sex—that was how Isla Calix related to the world when she was troubled. Her answer wasn’t his. Still, he made sure to thank her. She was trying. In her own way.

He closed the corner, stopping before iron-wrought gate. Curious. Life wasn’t a story. The Host were not monsters under the bed, and he was learning how to kill them. In his own way, in his own time he’d try to sway the rest of the class.

Martin pushed the gate open and entered a courtyard. One side was sand, with boulders arranged to please the eye, the other occupied with men and women in grey robes. They were drilling.

In Sweden, arcology or provincial camp, the rules were clear. To earn one’s majority and become a legal adult you had demonstrate a certain proficiency. Physically as mentally.

But these acolytes of the Saint Society— for that where he recognised the robes as belonging to from— were fighting to kill.

One girl, atleast a year younger than himself sported an eye that was swollen like a fist. A man old enough to be his grandfather limped, twirling the staff in defensive screen to ward his pursuer.

Supervising it all was a helmet-less Proxy whose Chassis reminded him of something a space-pilot might wear. Gleaming lines following the limbs.

The woman drifted above the trainees, stopping above him.

“Have you come to join us, Martin Soleri?”

He blanched. How did she know his name?

“The local kenshi of the Saint Society all make it worthwhile to know of the Proxies-to-be in their respective arcologies.” Brown eyes centered on him, knowing.

“The Saint herself has declared a Decade of Strife. We must gather all who would be worthy and take atleast the head of another Sovereign before the turn of the next century.”

She gave him a meaningful glance.

A chill like a cold wind blew through Martin’s body, all the way down to the toes. To this woman, those words weren’t some propaganda meant to inspire a population tired of war…turn of the century…How long had she fought? The fervour of her eyes…this was truth to her. The lay of the land.

His gaze panned to the acolytes who were sprinting between pillars. Their breath fogged the air, small puffs of white. He frowned—it wasn’t that cold, unless? Unless they had purposely petitioned the Administrator to have a localised area where the temperature differed.

He saw them then, a force that would fight even Sovereigns without Chassis.

Most arcologies knew that you had to pick a fight with the Host, sooner than later even without Proxies, but the Saint Society was one of few forces that actively sought them out.

“No,” he said eventually. One day perhaps. After his Tutelage.

The woman shrugged. “You have questions, though.”

Martin did not deny it.

Gravity reasserted its will and the Proxy gently dropped to the ground. Two staffs manifested; one she twirled, the other she threw to him.

Her Chassis disappeared.

He could see where this was going…

“I don’t know staves.” His mandatory schooling had covered guns and simple body armor. Nobody fought the Host with staves. Well, nobody sane.

She pulled up a handheld in the form of a crescent, clipping it to her hair. She wore the same grey outfit as the acolytes, layers of cloth spun around the body but meant to allow for a range of the arms. It reminded him of another outfit…She tapped the communication device twice, and a boundary field in blood formed.

They entered it. It reminded him of another time, another Proxy who had surrounded him in red. That Proxy had hurt him, but never broken him. He reminded himself of that.

“We’ll keep it simple. Touches, below the head.Yes?”

He nodded.

They each took a position.

The dance began with encirclement; Martin made sure to keep his eyes on her hands.

“Why, Mr Soleri, are you so angry?”

The staff became a blur and Martin held the stick up, the force of the blow jarring through his entire body.

He cursed.

“Angry?”

Deflection. It was all about the angles. As with aurics, he didn’t need a showy move. He needed a solid one.

The staff snaked on a path that would break his knees. He slapped it down and thrust.

The other staff rotated, somehow pulling the motion of his own staff against him and he overextended. A second blow swung down like guillotine and his shoulder erupted in pain.

If he had been wearing a Chassis, rose would have covered him by now.

“…and sloppy.” The disdain on her face was worse than any pain he felt. It made him small.

He wasn’t stupid. He could see what she was doing. Like a violent therapist. All the same, it was working. Coal burned in his chest.

He created some more distance by stepping away, on the edge of the boundary field. He needed more time.

“I guess you’re right. I am angry.”

The staff diminished in seize, manipulated by some clever handling of its middle. It rose, shortenened, became longer.

“Of?”

The tilt of her lips, the set of her shoulders, they all seemed to convey the sense he had failed as a pupil, that he had committed that sin of asking an all too obvious question that everyone knew the answer to.

She took a step and with the full length of her staff, a greater radius. Martin braced, the oncoming strike bouncing off his own staff, extended on the vertical down in between the brick of the courtyard. He wasn’t stupid enough take the blow directly, not when she was so much more skilled.

“Injustice.”

He withdrew the staff and lunged for her throat with the force of his emotions behind the wooden implement.

Halfway on its track, he stopped.

Disappointed. She hadn’t moved. The anger rolled in him.

“Injustice? The world is full of it. If you would go about changing the world…”

She thrust with the staff and Martin skipped away.

“…then you need power.”

“I knew that already.”

He struck for her knees, feinting, upwards.

The length of the wood was batted away, almost casually.

“Do you? Because you seem to think, expect even, the world to adhere to some notion of fairness. That, even barring your origins, you are naive.”

He threw his staff down and manifested a gauntlet of white. Unknown to Martin Soleri, a lotus of pink manifested around his eyes as a wave of rose streaked on a collision course with the Society-official.

She dropped her staff too; and two ink-black gloves with lines appeared on her hands. She thrust away and the ‘wave’ bounced back, but now twice as quick.

There was enough time for Martin’s mouth to gape ajar before his feet left the ground and he had the distant thought that, ‘yes, this would hurt’ before he struck soft sand. Not.

The other acolytes in the yard had stopped at the show. Martin dismissed the gauntlet, suddenly embarassed. Were he to look in a mirror, what color would his face be?

“I…”

The official—and he had never gotten her name, had he?

“Am angry. Which is why we will forget that incident just now, Mr Soleri.”

She paused, brown eyes intent and serious.”You have power, Mr Soleri. But you lack discipline. Would you like it?”

“Like what?”

“The power to change the world. Not merely venting your anger on some habitat.”

She knew. Who had…Coastline, of course.

_______

He sat in a café, Martin Soleri.

I’ll think about it. His words to the official. And he was thinking about it, as heat-streamers rose from the coffee twining over his head.

He hadn’t been able to touch that official with a staff. That was one fact. She was an expert.

And she had turned his endoauric on him. That was a high level technique. She had matched the intent by the emotion and returned it in greater force. To do that? Seen from a step removed…yes, she too knew anger.

Power, which he had desired once, he now had. But this was no cast, no story where simple righteousness would earn him victory.

He took a handheld and scribbled a message.

_______

On the next day’s lecture, held in the hall from which the Examination began, Raja Sviratham stood next to an unfamiliar woman. There was enough space on the podium to squeeze in another twenty people, yet the instructor stod directly behind her.

She didn’t look dangerous—but then, Martin had a suspicion that few people thought him dangerous-looking.

White hair, coarse and thick ran to the side of a lined face. Dark eyes, by degrees darker than her own skin stared with undisguised contempt down at the rest of the class. It was no auric, but it felt like it.

Some of the seniors had been old when the Devastation settled and later became the Frantic Forties. He suspected she was one such senior.

“I’m here today,” the woman roared suddenly,”because my services have been required by High Command.”

He didn’t recognise her Trade.

She stepped off the podium.

”I can see why.” She grabbed Ronja Somaronov by the chin, and whatever she saw there…was not enough.

The woman trudged up the stairs with thundering energy. She paused at the sight of Guo Hong, his fuzz growing out, and Lisa, who was giving the woman a glare worthy of a rattlesnake. Martin noted they both had something at their feet. Rucksacks?

“Some of you,” she said, staring at the Guos with flat lips,”will have prepared.”

“Prepared?”

The woman zoned in on Berenice, and Martin wished the German Proxy hadn’t sat next to him.

“Yes! Prepared. Good gods, does nobody reads the schedule?!”

“It changed. Yesterday-“

“Yesterday.” The woman cut through Berenice’s run-on sentence. “Yesterday is that and now is now. If you louts had payed any attention to your schedule, you’d know that.”

Martin checked his handheld. The name of the lecture was:”Preparation In Terrestrials.” The abbreviation of the lecture, helpfully added in a parenthesis, read ‘PIT’.

Fuck.

“When the time is right, we will leave Vänern Arcology for real-life exercises. You’ll have the Crown Championship. See the Front, a little tour to Gibraltar or Beijing. Why! Maybe we’ll take a little trip to the Luna Remnant. Failure is always a good lesson learned early.”

“It can’t be that bad,” Berenice whispered.

“The last time we sat in this hall Sviratham had us chased by a fucking Regial. You know, that time you ran out on us?”

Calix’s Trade was beginning to sound like Spanish.

“Oh, it wasn’t that bad, Calix.”

She glared at him.

“Ah…”

“…for now,” the woman continued, walking between their seats, touching the people of the class,”you have me.” A bony finger stabbed him in the shoulder. Really was the meaning of that, besides harassing them?

She stopped at highest tier of the amphitheatre. Condescending down.”My name is Elder and while you will come to hate me, you will survive. That is, and will be, my only concern.”

She clapped gauntleted hands then, each clap as loud as an explosion, as quiet as a sigh, and within that noise Martin Soleri dropped down on a beach.

He landed with knees bent. Ah, he was learning the routine.

“I hate being teleported,” he said to nobody particular.

_______

It was a habitat alright. But none he knew. He confirmed as much when his erratic flight saw him landing on a rock jutting up from the stormy sea. There was a beach, the beginning of a jungle, the sea—and then nothing. The world receded in a screen that powdered rock. He had tried it.

A bit lacklustre, after the echoing Level 1 and the Verdant habitat winds and greenery.

“Skimping on the resources, are we?”

Glowing letters shone in respone, a temporary ward of light.

For the following week you will maintain a camp in this pocket-world. All you need can be found, should you dare. Expect adversity and surprises. Failure to hold out for a minimum of three days will punished. Severly.”

Martin Soleri made a note to never be in Raja Sviratham’s presence without at least a week’s supplies. Or this ‘Elder’.

“I don’t think I have hunted anything bigger than a rat in my life.”