Fynn was pissed. Ever since he had watched Val’s limp body get dragged off by that Enhanced direwolf, he’d been asking anyone he could about what had happened. And for the better part of two weeks, he’d been completely unsuccessful. Unlike Yessa, Fynn had not been surprised when their squad leader Kriven had not returned from his “chat” with the Council; instead, he had been exiled from the Guardians and imprisoned under several serious charges. The remaining senior member, Wren, had stepped into the leader position instead, and several new Guardians had joined to fill out the squad.

As they often did, his mind wandered briefly as he thought of Yessa. He’d been spending more time with his blonde teammate recently, and it was clear that there was some mutual attraction between them. Her cheerful company was the perfect salve for his loneliness and worry following Val’s disappearance, and she’d dropped several hints that a dinner invitation would be welcome.

Unfortunately, a heavy sense of guilt stopped him from trying to start that relationship. Under the guise of consoling Yessa as her family dealt with the ramifications of Kriven’s imprisonment, Fynn had shamelessly tried to mine as much information about Val as possible. While he didn’t regret using any means necessary to try and help his best friend, it did leave him feeling very conflicted about the cute girl who already seemed to have moved into a corner of his mind.

On the other hand, Celedon was a contact that Fynn had absolutely no problem exploiting. If there was one person in the entirety of Peakpoint who knew the status of a direwolf in the vicinity of the city, it would be the Scout Guildmaster. And since Fynn and Val had been Celedon’s direct trainees during their Scout rotation, Fynn had expected at least some vague updates about the situation. He had been completely stonewalled instead; in fact, Celedon had not even responded to a single one of his messages. At least, that had been the case until the previous evening.

Out of the blue, he asks me to meet him in our old Scout training room? And when I get here, he tells me he’s set up a sparring match so he can “check on my progress”? Not to mention that he picked someone who reminds me of Val.

Fynn felt his chest tighten as his opponent drew her weapons in response. If Celedon’s goal was to throw him off with his choice of opponent, he was succeeding marvelously.

Mera, let’s run the sword and shield constructs, and light reinforcement on the armor.

His Daemon gave their acknowledgement and Fynn felt a veritable flood of nano rush through his traces. He still marveled at the speed with which his weapons formed now that Mera was directing the process. The efficiency of his body enhancement subroutines had increased since becoming a User as well, making him stronger and faster than before. He took a deep breath as the thin layer of nano that spread over his armor flowed up over his head to form a helmet. His armor constructs still weren’t as strong as a real helmet yet, but it should be sufficient for a practice battle.

With a pulse of nano through his legs, Fynn leapt forward as he charged towards his opponent. To his surprise, she mirrored his movements and the gap between them closed quickly. Cursing under his breath, Fynn realized his mistake. The Val he knew would have maintained some distance, peppering him with bullets from afar while waiting for him to make a mistake. Without realizing it, he had assumed his foe would fight the same way since she had a similar build and kit.

To his credit, Fynn adjusted almost immediately, but the split moment of hesitation was enough to lose the initiative. His shield flashed up in place to deflect the short burst of bullets coming his way, but his sword was too slow to fully parry the slash on the right side of his body. The tip of the knife scraped across his armor, leaving a shallow score in his outer layer of nano.

Mera was already repairing the damage, allowing Fynn to focus on the battle before him. He lowered his left shoulder and slammed his shield into his opponent. Pushing her off-balance, he swung his sword in a downward slash that just missed as she ducked under the blow. The woman fired another few shots at his lower body below his shield, but Fynn had reinforced his nano armor in anticipation of the move and the bullets careened harmlessly off his legs.

Despite dealing next to no damage, a slight chill and numbness rippled out from every place his opponent made contact. It didn’t seem to affect any of his abilities, but a sense of urgency gripped Fynn. His own techniques were relatively straightforward, but he hadn’t seen anything particularly impressive from his sparring partner yet. He had no intention of letting her play it slow and build up her technique.

A growl escaped his lips as he shoved power through his traces. The packed dirt cracked under his boot as he sprinted forward, slashing at the woman. This time, his enhanced speed and strength were too much for her to completely dodge. His sword glanced off her shoulder, leaving her unable to evade the powerful kick that caught her in the chest.

She went flying back, skipping once off the ground before rolling up to her feet. Impressed at her recovery speed, Fynn rushed her again. His shield ate another few rounds, the slight numb sensation spreading even through his nano construct. Fynn came out on top of the next few exchanges as well, not landing a decisive blow but chipping away at her defenses.

Although the apparent balance of power being firmly on his side, Fynn couldn’t help the gnawing feeling of unease in the corner of his mind. He had continuously increased the power of his body enhancement subroutines, which were the pride of his family. Pushing himself to his max, he would burn through his energy in less than five minutes but could hold his own with even the top F-ranked Guardians for that time.

Despite his sudden burst of speed and strength, he found himself unable to land a decisive blow. The woman clearly couldn’t keep up with him, but somehow she always seemed to be in the right place at the right time to minimize the impact of his blows. The damage piled up on her armor, but she didn’t relent, and for the first time Fynn wondered if she would actually outlast him.

Just as he settled in for a grueling battle of attrition, the cadence of the fight changed abruptly. His eyes barely caught the flickering traces along her pistol’s barrel as she apparently switched ammo types. Warning bells rang in his head, but he couldn’t react in time before another flurry of bullets rushed his way.

Fynn belatedly realized that in his rush to boost his body enhancement subroutines, he’d routed power away from his nano constructs, leaving them weakened. He caught several bullets with his shield, which thankfully held, but more passed by his defenses and pierced through his armor. She had clearly targeted non vital areas, but Fynn still roared in pain as no less than six rounds blew through his right arm and legs.

Gritting his teeth, Fynn went to take a step forward and unexpectedly dropped to one knee as his power dropped precipitously. Looking inward, he was horrified to see the gunshots had perfectly blasted through critical traces in his extremities. It was nothing that couldn’t be repaired, but it completely crippled his current combat capabilities. His constructs were spared, but having a sword didn’t matter if he couldn’t swing it faster than a normal human.

“Do you yield?”

Fynn’s head snapped up at the familiar voice. He’d been so shocked that he hadn’t noticed his opponent walking up to him. His constructs melted away, pouring back into his body and rushing to his shattered traces to begin the repair process.

His helmet melted away as well, leaving him staring up at the woman before him. Tears started welling up in his eyes as his mind put the pieces together. Her initial combat style had been so different that he had pushed the possibility from his mind, but now hope burned in his chest.

“Val?”

Val didn’t trust her throat as she dropped her weapons to the ground. Reaching up, she took off her helmet and let that drop to the dirt as well. Noir grumbled about leaving herself exposed, but Val ignored his paranoia for the moment. If she wasn’t safe with Celedon, Bri, and Fynn in the heart of the Scout headquarters, then she wasn’t safe anywhere.

Fynn started to struggle to his feet but Val kneeled down and tackled him in a hug that nearly sent them to the ground. Tears flowed freely down her cheeks as she felt another knot of tension release in her chest. A laugh of relief bubbled up past her lips, trailing off in a chuckle as she felt Fynn’s weakened right arm struggle to match the pressure of his left in the hug. Pulling away, Val looked into Fynn’s brown eyes.

“I said, do you yield?”

Fynn snorted and his eyes flashed challengingly for a moment, but then released her to hold up his hands in surrender.

“Yes I yield. But… how? I’ve been so worried about you. No one would tell me anything.” The last sentence was punctuated with a glare at Celedon, who coincidentally picked that moment to turn and talk to Bri.

Val laughed again. “Don’t blame him too much, he really couldn’t have told you.” The grin slipped off her face as she continued, “And frankly, as much as I want to tell you everything, I don’t think I can either.”

“What’s going on, Val? When you got dragged off, I was worried, but then when no one would say anything… I didn’t know what to think.”

“Honestly, you probably wouldn’t believe me even if I could tell you.”

Val bit her lip as she met Fynn’s somber look. She glanced over at Celedon and Bri, who appeared to be casually chatting but Val was sure they were keeping an eye on Val and Fynn.

“All I can say is that I’m being targeted because of my unique circumstances. You saw how that started, and that I’m not as safe as you might think even inside the city.”

“Yea I noticed. Hell of a wake up call, seeing my best friend taken like that.” Fynn clenched his right fist repeatedly to test the newly repaired traces in his arm. “Did you know Kriven, our squad leader, got thrown in jail?”

Surprise registered on Val’s face before her expression darkened. “Good riddance,” she spat.

“Hmm. I thought that might be the case,” said Fynn softly.

He stood to his feet and wiped away his tears, with Val following suit shortly afterwards. She picked up and holstered her weapons, before finally slipping her helmet back on. She wasn’t sure whether it was Noir subconsciously rubbing off on her, but she had to admit it felt nice and safe to be completely encapsulated in her armor.

She set her visor back to transparent so that Fynn could still see her face. She could tell that he wanted to ask more questions, and clearly he had started to understand that something big was going on based on his comment about Kriven. But in the end, he just let out a deep sigh and clapped his hand on her shoulder.

“Well, I’m just glad to see you are alright. And I know you’re trying to stay on the down-low, but hope we can still see you from time to time. The family misses you too.”

“I’m so happy to see you too, Fynn. And I hope I won’t be hidden away forever. Just need to get stronger. Much stronger.”

“Looks like you are on the right path. This is, like, your first win in a few months, right? What’s our record, 600 to 20 or something like that?”

Fynn stuck his tongue out at her and Val felt her cheeks redden, even though she knew he was kidding.

“Hey now, it wasn’t nearly that lopsided. Noir, let the record show Fynn and my record was 411 to 132.”

Noted, although I’m 98.6% certain you meant to say 132 to 411. That is, I doubt you were winning more before you got me.

Et tu, Noir?

Pushing through her Daemon's not unexpected betrayal, Val continued, “Although I vote we should have a reset now that we’re both Users. So my new record is really 1 to 0!”

If we take into account your spars with Bri and Zavis, you’re really 52 to 1 overall. And that’s being generous and only counting overall sessions as losses.

Damn, Noir, you’re really cranking up the savageness today.

I’ve been holding back on account of your fragile mental state, but I expect your resilience has risen several orders of magnitude now that you’ve been reunited with your friend. I admit I was skeptical about revealing your survival to Fynn, but at least we’ll be able to push your training much harder now.

Val thought about sending back a snarky message, but in the end decided against it. As usual, Noir was right. Even if she hadn’t acknowledged it fully yet, having Fynn back in her life made her feel even more motivated. She thought she’d been feeding Fynn platitudes about getting strong enough to live a more open life, but if she was honest with herself, that was exactly what she wanted. Although she shuddered briefly at what training regimen Noir had planned now.

Breaking through her internal conversation, Fynn said, “Oh, that’s how you want to play it, huh? Don’t worry, I’ll be coming for that record soon enough. Although it seems you’ve picked up a couple tricks.”

“Yea I have,” said Val with a grin.

It had been a major breakthrough when she had discovered that she could modify Noir’s subroutines with her pistol. The epiphany had come when she had gotten frustrated after a match with Bri. After flying across the pit for the third time in as many minutes, Val had pulled out her pistol and emptied the entire mag into Bri’s armor. She’d done no damage, of course, but she had hit Bri.

In hindsight, it was an obvious solution. Val’s poor compatibility with body enhancement subroutines made her slower and weaker than most, but she could point and shoot with the best of them and very few Users could dodge a flurry of bullets. She’d always focused on melee to deliver her nano disruptive blows, but Brain had proved that even the physically frail could be a major danger with the right subroutine embedded in each bullet.

Val had finally worked up the courage to ask Kaya about how her subroutines worked, but Kaya had just pointed her to Wallon. Val had been confused until Wallon had explained that he had been the one that helped Kaya modify her techniques once she had become a Defect. The rotund man was a constant source of surprise, and Val found herself reevaluating her opinion of Wallon yet again.

For his part, Wallon had given Val a new knife and pistol. Unlike her previous set, these weapons did not have any built-in subroutines. No nano edge on her knife, no piercing and shock ammo on the pistol. Instead, the grips of the weapons interfaced with her exosuit and allowed her to push her own subroutines through. She had adapted Noir’s piercing subroutine first, giving her a substitute for the nano edge and piercing ammo immediately.

The downside of having to maintain those actively herself was ameliorated by the ability to switch to two other modes on her weapons. Arguably the most iconic part of her kit was the nano disruption subroutine. Val had been able to incorporate that into a stabbing attack with her knife, but had not yet adapted it to her gun.

She’d had better success with Noir’s third technique, the passive infiltration of her opponent’s nanosystem. This was the subroutine she had running on her weapons almost the entire fight with Fynn. Every slash and shot that hit him had imparted a bit of her own nano into his nanosystem; after the first few hits, Noir had been able to track the flow of Fynn’s nano and predict his movements. Combined with their high sync, it had been enough for Val to stay half a step ahead of Fynn and overcome her slower speed.

Val had switched over to her piercing rounds in the last moments of the fight. Using actual disruption would have been more effective, but nano flowed through physical traces in the body, so even a few well-placed wounds would impact the ability to use nano. With Noir’s help targeting the bottlenecks of nano and subsequently correcting her aim, Val had effectively eliminated the majority of Fynn’s body enhancement and ended the fight.

“Not going to share?” asked Fynn.

No!

Hush, I know.

“Not yet, sorry Fynn. Have to build up a win buffer first.” Val’s grin widened even further.

“Oh, so you admit I’m stronger, eh? Have to resort to secret techniques to come out on top?”

“Yes, actually.”

The smile fell off Val’s face now. Fynn had just meant it in their matches, but to Val, keeping her techniques hidden for as long as possible was vitally important. Fynn seemed to sense her subdued mood and pulled her in for another hug. They lapsed into silence as they stood together in the center of the pit, but it was a content silence rather than an awkward one.

Ahh, now it finally feels like I’m back home.