Scene 8 - November 6th

Exterior Training Grounds, Simultaneous

Abraham Armstrong

“Alright everyone,” I said as we arrived at our starting area. “Not a ton has changed for us since last year - our capabilities are the same - but we now have an objective to protect. I want you, Vulcan, to be protecting our flag, and you, Starling, to seek theirs.”

“What about us?” Anima asked.

“You’re hunting, as usual,” I told her. She wasn’t often thought of as a combat type, her healing skills by far the most prominent to the public, but Anima was one of the best combatants on the team. Not only did she had the most experience out of any of us, her magical power was far more versatile than most thought. People saw her healing, or creating golems, and thought that that left her weak personally - but in fact, she could burn her store of lifeforce to temporarily enhance her physical capabilities to an incredible degree. “I’ll be floating around to try and keep an eye on everything, and assist as needed.

“Ben,” I asked, turning to Starling, who had started tapping away on his tech staff the moment we arrived, “how are you doing on the usual hack?”

“I should be in,” he said with a frown, “but none of their earpieces have been activated yet.”

“Hmm.” If they weren’t using the earpieces, that left them with only two options - either Holly was going to use her power over sound to keep the other Journeymen connected, or they were going without coordination at all. Which seemed incredibly unlikely, to me. The only way that could possibly go well was if they all stayed close together, perhaps playing a defensive game to try and knock a couple of us out when we went for the flag. But that seemed more likely to go badly - if we in turn joined forces against them, they would lose - particularly without an equalizer like Referee available to them.

“Holly is going to be coordinating them with her power,” I said aloud. “Miriam, you’re her magical tutor - how’s her multitasking? Could she be directing them as well as providing a comm network?”

“He,” Anima said sternly. “Loki’s in costume, that means it’s ‘he.’”

I blinked, then swore. I had known that kid for years, and still I fucked up on occasion. “Right, he. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to me, I’m not the one you misgendered.”

I sighed. “Point is, could he be doing that and still be an effective leader? He couldn’t, the year before last.”

She thought about it. “Not very well,” she said after a moment. “Keeping control of a system with five moving parts is complicated, and he’s mentioned to me before that connecting people like that really complex - at least as much as my golems, and even I struggle with controlling five at once. I think... I think he could keep them all connected,” she decided, “but nothing more. No leading, no other personally-guided illusions while he did that - only static ones.”

“Good news for us, then,” I said with a nod, “because without Holly as a leader, they don’t have any good tacticians - he’s by far their best.”

“You don’t see this going well for them, then?” Vulcan asked. “The Journeyman did win last year, you know.”

I waved a hand dismissively. “Not only did they have you on their side last year, but they also had Referee and Blue Phoenix. Their combat strength has gone down massively since then, and ours has gone up since you replaced the Warden. They can’t turtle up and fight us like that again.”

“If you say so,” he said, dubiously.

“It’ll be fine,” I promised. “And just to make sure... ice over that flag, will you?”

He raised an eyebrow. “That seems like cheating,” he pointed out, but he did reach up to snag the flag and began sucking the heat from it, ice quickly forming over the cloth and extending down the flagpole.

“Nothing in the rules against it!” I said cheerfully, as Vulcan continued to layer thick ice over the flag.