Val could have stayed there with her best friend for much longer, but their moment was interrupted by the sound of clapping from the side. With a sigh, Val dropped her hug to turn and look at Celedon.

I only have a few data points, but it seems to me that Celedon has impeccable timing to be optimally abrasive.

Right on the money, Noir. You both enjoy needling people, that’s for sure.

What do you mean, I don’t needle— Oh, no you didn’t. You’ll pay for that.

I don’t doubt that I will, Noir. I look forward to your punishment.

Feeling the Daemon purposefully pull back from the neural link, Val smirked and turned to Celedon. She would almost certainly regret that later, but she was in too good of a mood to hold back. Unfortunately, if there was one person who was capable of single-handedly ruining her mood, it was the slender man loping towards her now.

“Quite a showing! By both of you, but especially Val! Which is good news, I guess, since you’ve got a deadline coming up. And Fynn, those constructs were nice, but I wonder if you wouldn’t be better off spending more time training than talking with Yessa.”

“Yessa? Who’s Yessa?” asked Val. Noir broke their self-imposed isolation to send her a mental picture of Fynn’s blonde teammate. Val grinned as she watched his face closely. “Oh, the cute one? Now, why would you be spending time with her instead of training, Fynn?”

It was hard to tell against his dark skin, but Val swore she could see him blush before he turned his head away and coughed into his fist. “If you must know, she’s from an elite family and I was trying to use any connections I could to find out more about your disappearance, Val.”

“Uh huh. I’m sure that’s the only reason,” she said as she poked Fynn’s chest. She paused for a moment before her grin widened again. “Even if that’s true, it means I was giving you an excuse to go talk to a cute girl by yourself. Which makes me the best wingman ever. Remote wingmanning!”

“Never mind that. What’s this about a deadline?”

Val decided to let Fynn’s attempt at changing the subject go, although she made a mental note to bug him about it again later.

“Oh, that. Well, let’s just say that Celedon continues to lay down unreasonable expectations for us. Or at least for me, in this case.”

“No, that’s a great suggestion,” said Celedon, butting into their conversation. Turning to Fynn, Celedon continued, “I have high hopes for both of you. Make E rank in 2 months, and D in 6 months.”

Fynn raised an eyebrow at Celedon. “Haha, very funny.” He looked over at Val, but taking in her grim expression, a look of horror came over him. “No, you can’t be serious. That’s not just high, that’s astronomically high. What happens if we don’t make it?”

Val’s heart warmed to hear Fynn say “we”, but not enough to offset the chill she felt as she responded. “Forced retirement for me. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’m being targeted by some powerful groups. The Council has decided to take a chance on my potential, but if I can’t get strong fast enough to stand a chance on my own, they’ll cut their losses and drop me.”

Fynn’s jaw dropped. “That’s… brutal.”

“But necessary.” There was a steel in Celedon’s voice that made Val shiver. She had no doubt the he was one of the few that believed in giving her a chance, but he was no stranger to making hard decisions. And stripping Val of Noir would probably not even make his top ten difficult decisions of the week, if it came to that.

“But that’s my problem, not yours, Fynn. For now, I hope we can make these bouts more frequent, and you’ll have to not drag behind too far if you want to be a useful sparring partner,” Val said with a forced smile, trying to lighten the mood.

“Are you sure, Val? Just say the word and I’ll drop from the Guardians and request a transfer to your unit. How are the Defects organized, anyway?”

“I appreciate the offer, Fynn, but are you sure about that?”

“Of course! If you need help, I’ll be there. You know that, Val.”

“But if you do that, you’ll lose out on valuable Yessa time.” Fynn blushed again and mumbled something under his breath, causing Val to laugh. “No, seriously, it means a lot to me to hear you say that. But you’ve got your own life, and I’ve got a few new friends watching over me too.”

She pointed towards Bri, who beamed at Val happily as she stood a few steps behind Celedon. Fynn eyed Bri dubiously, clearly only seeing a bubbly girl only five or so years older than them. Val opened her mouth to warn him about underestimating Bri before a wicked idea crossed her mind.

Ooh, devious. I think I’ll enjoy this.

Me too.

“Hey Bri, Fynn was just wondering how you stacked up against him.”

Fynn started. “What? N—”

“Oh really? Now that you mention it, he did seem skeptical,” drawled Bri.

She took a step towards Fynn as she underwent the Jekyll and Hyde transformation Val had come to expect from the woman. Bri’s warm smile twisted into a vicious grin and she fixed Fynn with a piercing stare. Fynn desperately backpedaled as he rebuilt his nano sword and shield constructs again.

“Don’t worry, Bri, he’s at least twice or three times more durable than me! You can go a little harder than normal!” Val called out over her shoulder as she jogged towards the edge of the ring. She made it about halfway before Celedon suddenly appeared by her side, clamping his hand down on her shoulder.

“Wow, even I didn’t see that coming,” said Celedon. His words were casual, but something about his tone unnerved Val.

“I thought you’d like that,” replied Val. She tried to take a step forward, but his hand kept her locked in place. She slowly turned her head to look over at Celedon with a sinking feeling in her stomach. “Should be an entertaining fight. It would be a shame to miss any of it, so let’s hop out of the ring?” She hadn’t meant to end that as a question, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that Celedon had other plans in mind.

“That’s certainly one option,” he said with a wolfish grin. “But I’m also interested to get a more… hands-on assessment of my favorite Defect’s progress.”

Val struggled against his grip for a moment before giving up with a sigh.

“I don’t have much choice, do I?”

“Not at all.” Raising his voice slightly, Celedon turned to face the two combatants at the center of the pit. “Cambrisa, keep your fight over there. I’ll be testing Val on this half.”

“Will do!”

Bri somehow still managed to sound cheerful as she blasted towards Fynn. She covered the ten feet between them in a single explosive step, completely pulverizing the ground where she had started. Fynn desperately tried to bring his shield up in time, but Bri casually landed an open-handed slap against his torso that sent him flying backwards. Just before Fynn hit the outer wall of the pit, Bri launched herself forward again with a sound like the clap of thunder, caught him by the foot, and slammed him into the ground.

Val looked on slightly horrified as she watched her best friend get absolutely Bri-handled. Is this what my “spars” with her look like from the outside? It did seem that Bri had taken Val at her word and was being slightly more physical with Fynn. Val and Fynn locked gazes for a brief moment, and she tried to send him a wordless apology with her eyes. Then she realized that was dumb, and asked Noir to open up a channel with him instead.

Val: Sorry about this, Fynn, I didn’t think she’d take this so seriously. Good luck.

Fynn: You too.

Val frowned at his response before she felt the air around her start to move. Her eyes widened in panic as she recognized the sensation. Val turned her head just in time to see Celedon slash diagonally downwards with one of his hands before a wall of air slammed into her back, sending her tumbling forward a dozen feet.

Reorienting herself towards her own opponent, Val rolled up onto her feet before immediately diving off to the side to dodge another blast of wind. She gritted her teeth in frustration – if Celedon had been serious, she would have been hit with a razor-sharp blade of air rather than a blunt wall and she would never have had the chance to get back up again. She quickly pulled out her pistol and fired a pair of bullets at Celedon. She watched in despair as Celedon created a solid wall of air before him, stopping the rounds dead just inches from his body. It was indeed true that very few Users could stop a flurry of bullets. It just so happened that the Scout Guildmaster was unfortunately one of those Users.

Celedon’s techniques belonged to a rare but powerful class of subroutines that allowed Users to manipulate nano in their environments. Ranged attacks with nano were fairly common; indeed, even Val’s new abilities fell in this category. But the distinction was that most ranged attacks relied solely on the User’s nano, limiting the scope of these techniques to the capacity of one’s nanosystem.

On the other hand, Celedon mixed his nano into the ambient nano around him, giving him access to a much larger pool of nano to manipulate. In a sense, his nano acted as a force multiplier rather than the force itself. Of course, the strategy required an inhuman level of control, but that’s what Daemons were for. It also left Celedon’s physical body significantly weaker than most other Users of his rank, but that didn’t matter much if they couldn’t touch him.

This was the unfortunate position Val found herself in now. In theory, her kit could still work against Celedon. If she could mark his nano with hers like she had with Fynn, she would be able to sense and predict his blasts of wind. Landing a nano disruption subroutine would cut the link between Celedon and the air around him, leaving him vulnerable. But none of that mattered because Val couldn’t land a single blow on the infuriating man.

She bobbed and weaved around the few walls of air Noir was able to pick out, but more often than not, she was left scrambling after being blown off-balance by an attack she didn’t see coming. Every single one of her bullets were either stopped in midair or deflected by a well-placed current of air. Her knife was left cutting through empty air as Celedon easily maintained his distance every time she tried to close the gap. Meanwhile, Celedon simply stood in the eye of a storm of his creation, chatting away at Val with equal parts encouragement and mockery.

“Ooh, that was a good move! Very tricky, I like the way you’re thinking!”

“Whoops, did I put that wind wall there? How inconvenient. For you, of course!”

“Winding down already? You won’t make it to E rank with that attitude!”

After five futile minutes, Val had just about had enough. An earth-shattering smash behind her indicated that Fynn was not having much luck either.

Val: How are you doing, Fynn?

Fynn: Not good. This lady is so damn strong. Remind me never to disrespect any of your Defect friends again. How about you?

Val: Good call on the respect thing. And also not good over here, I can’t even touch him.

Val took another wind wall to the face, bowling over backwards before leaping back to her feet with a growl.

Val: I’m making zero progress on my own here. Maybe if we had both of us on one, we might be able to at least hit them.

Fynn: You think they’d allow that?

Val: They are clearly just playing with us here. Might as well make it interesting.

Fynn: I mean, I’m always game. What are you thinking?

Val: Gimme ten seconds.

Val fired the final few rounds from her pistol before grabbing another universal mag from her belt and jamming it into the open receptacle in the bottom of the grip. Dropping off the team channel with Fynn for a moment, Val reached out to her Daemon instead. Noir, some quick questions about our marking subroutine. She rattled off a series of potential scenarios to try and get a sense of the flexibility of the technique.

The first two are just a flat no. The third is something we can probably do in the future with higher sync, and the fourth is something we may be able to do after some coordinated practice. Of all your ideas, the fifth is the only one that has a chance to work now.

Ok, well at least they’re not all busts.

By “has a chance” to work, I mean we have a probability of –

Don’t tell me the odds, Noir. Let a girl believe for just a few more seconds, alright?

Your funeral. I mean, Celedon probably won’t kill you this time, but not listening to the odds is a good way of ending up dead.

Considering “you probably won’t die this time” as the best case approval she would get out of Noir for now, Val hopped back into the channel with Fynn.

Val: Still alive back there, Fynn?

Fynn: Barely. Whatchu got for us?

Val: We fake on Celedon and take Bri as she chases. You drama dive over to the center here, pick me up and we do a reverse Dragon bomber to keep Bri off your tail. When Celedon blasts us, you kite us around. I’ll torpedo past first, you follow, and hopefully we clamp for a disrupt. All clear?

What? How would anyone get a sensible plan out of that?

Fynn: Ok, got it.

Val took great joy in the astonishment rolling off Noir coming over her neural link. She doubted that she’d have too many more “I told you so” opportunities where she would catch the Daemon off guard, and basked in the feeling until Fynn’s next message brought her back to the present moment.

Fynn: I guess that means initiative is on me. Want a countdown?

Val: Yes please.

Fynn: Mkay. Looks like… Oh no wait. No, that’s not good either. Oh! Here we go. Three… Two… One…

Right on time, Val heard a loud crack behind her as she skidded to a stop, narrowly avoiding a blade of air that would have hit her if she kept moving. For maximum theatrical effect, she set her visor to be transparent and gave Celedon a wicked grin. Celedon froze for a second in mild confusion just as a shout came from Bri behind them.

“Hey Celery, you’ve got incoming!”