“So don’t just pick your friends,” Viv translated under her breath, and Rei nodded beside her.
“Second years!” Dryk Reese turned to face the students seated beneath the red-on-green projection of the school emblem. “One could argue that you face an even greater challenge. As opposed to last year, those of you who qualify for Sectionals now will be participating in the tournament proper. You will not-infrequently be faced with opponents with a year’s worth of training and growth on you, and you are expected to face them with the same dignity, strength, and confidence you would any other enemy. The Intra-School tournament will select sixteen from your number, as well as any additional elected teammates, but prepare yourselves. Recall there are members of the class above you who reached as far as the Intersystems as second years, and I have great faith that there are many among you with the same aptitude and ability.”
He turned to the center group, now. “And finally, for those of you to whom this is your last opportunity to participate in the collegiate tournaments: I remind you only that your turn has arrived to be the head of the spear. You are the flag, the waving banner of the Galens Institute, and it is on you that the eyes of the ISC will be most closely as you climb this seasons circuit levels. You have prepared for this. Some of you more than others, but all of you with intensity and dignity worthy of this school. I anticipate great things from you, and look forward to seeing the heights the best among you will attain this season.”
The bulk of his speech apparently at an end, he resumed a wider scan of the stands. “Should you have any questions, Captain Dent and your Type-instructors will field them in your next training session. For now, strive—each and every one of you—to better yourselves. For your own benefit, for your chance at joining a squad, for the griffin on your arms, and for the ISC as a whole. May the strongest rise victorious.”
Rei might have imagined it, but as the major spoke these final words, he could have sworn the man’s dark eyes looked in his direction, and not in any sort of benevolent way. Before he could ask if Viv had noticed the same thing, however, one of the attending officers behind Reese and Dent bellowed their orders.
“CADETS, YOU ARE AT LIBERTY FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE AFTERNOON!” The projected disc that had held the six of them aloft was already descending slowly. “DISMISSED!”
At once there was a great swell of voices and noise as nearly 400 students started to climb to their feet within their three divided sections. Rei, Viv, and Catcher were among them, along with Sense, Kay, and Leron Joy at their backs.
“We’re out a day of training for that?” Leron demanded bitterly as they moved parallel to one another towards the stairs. “Couldn’t they have just sent us a notice with our week’s schedule?”
“They wanted to impress upon us the importance of the event,” Rei responded evenly, waiting for the cadets in front of him to push into the orderly line. “This is our first shot at fighting under the Institute’s flag in front of the masses. Not to mention sponsoring families and brands.”
Reaching the steps first, Leron descended past Rei, snorting as he did. “You’ve got your head more firmly stuck in the clouds than I thought if you think you’re ever going to get a sponsorship, Ward.”
“It’s happened before,” Kay tried to placate gently. “I hear the Lasher had families fighting over him even before he qualified for the Intersystems.”
Leron waved her comment away dismissively. “Sure. But when they do the same for some nothing E-Ranker, I’ll eat my right boot.”
“Leron!” Kay hissed indignantly, but the pair of them were too far away a moment later for Rei to hear anything else, trailed by an embarrassed-looking Sense who grimaced apologetically back at them before letting himself be swallowed by the tide of bodies.
“Rei, forget what I said about getting stronger to keep people off your back.” Viv’s voice was astonishingly level when she spoke up from behind them as they, too, finally reached the steps. “Do it so you can feed that douche his own footwear.”
Rei laughed out loud, and was about to answer when a hand—its fingers as strong as steel wires—took him by the arm and pulled him straight across the stairs and into the empty row of the opposite section.
“Owe!” he shouted, completely taken aback. “What the hell are you—!”
And then he stopped, not even hearing Viv and Catcher’s shouts of surprise from behind him, nor the complaints from the cadets higher up on the steps to “Get moving!” and “Get out of the way!” as his friends half-blocked the stairs to chase after him.
He was too busy staring into a pair of green eyes, their brilliant patterns reflected a hundred different ways, like the intricate cuts of clean, clear gems.
“You and I should talk,” Aria Laurent, the most promising cadet Galens had seen in a generation, told him quietly.
CHAPTER 24
“Luck comes to those who wait.
… Or those willing to get up and get shit done.”
-ancient Earth proverb
It had taken her most of the morning, lunch, and the entirety of the special assembly to build up the nerve, but Aria had found it in the end. As soon as Dyrk Reese had dismissed them to leisure hours, she’d been the first on her feet, striding down her row and causing several of her classmates to shrink back into their seats in surprise. The most eager to leave had crowded the steps, but as always the students gave her room the moment they realized who she was, and it took all of 5 seconds to descend and step out of the line again.
Then, when Reidon Ward and his usual band had joined the throng, she’d plucked him from among them with no more effort than might have taken the plucking of a flower.
“You and I should talk,” she said, cutting off the short cadet’s yell of alarm. As she expected, Ward’s grey eyes went wide as he registered who she was.
Then, less expectantly, his face stilled, and he wrenched at his arm in her grasp. “Yeah, we should, but how about we do so when you’re not in the process of actively shattering my elbow?”
Taken aback by the boy’s intensity, it was a moment before Aria could think to release him. By the time she had, Viviana Arada had navigated the current of the students descending the steps to join them, Layton Catchwick right on her heels.
“Hey! What the hell are you—Oh!” Arada stopped short when she caught sight of Aria. Then she looked at Ward, then back to Aria. “Ooooh.”
Then, with the faintest glimpse of what could only have been a wicked smile, the Duelist spun around again, pushing Catchwick back towards the stairs. “Come on, we’re going.”
“Wait, what?” the tall Saber demanded, surprised as he himself stared at Aria in something between awe and alarm. “Hold on! What’s—?”
“Viv, you can stay,” Ward told Arada, but the brown-haired girl only smiled at him over her shoulder with a little too much enthusiasm.
“Oh no. No no. You two have fun. Catcher and I will be at the East Center when you’re… uh… done here.”
“We will be?” Catchwick—“Catcher” apparently—asked, bewildered.
“Might as well take advantage of the free afternoon!” Arada said brightly, but Aria suspected the girl would have used any excuse available to her to make her and Catchwick scarce. Indeed, despite a chasing protest from Ward and more confused questions from the blond Saber, a few seconds later the two of them had been swept into the departing first years again, leaving Aria standing awkwardly with the white-haired Atypical.
Awkwardly?
But yes, it was. The moment Arada and Catchwick were gone, Aria suddenly became aware of the staring eyes of her classmates as they filed by. A few—like the dark gaze of Logan Grant and a couple others—took the two of them in rather distastefully, but most of the rest only gaped in interest or astonishment. Abruptly Aria felt the weight of the last month, 4 weeks spent without anyone but her uncle, Maddie, and the occasional calls to her siblings to pass the time.
For a mo
ment, she forgot how to speak.
Reidon Ward, on the other hand, obviously suffered no such affliction.
“Well? What did you want to talk about?”
Aria started, her attention drawn back to him. Despite being some 5 inches shorter than her—had he grown since they’d last faced off?—the boy met her gaze almost fiercely, without a blink of hesitation or apprehension. She was surprised, but also… oddly pleased? It was an odd sensation to experience, but when most of the rest of the class either refused to look her in the eye or only wanted to stare her down in challenge, this sort of directness was refreshing.
“Oh… Uh…” Aria struggled to find her words, her flare of built up confidence shaken by the spectators still spilling by. “You… uh…”
She trailed off, and could feel her face going red as her gaze flit from Ward to the other first years, then, back again.
Unexpectedly, the boy looked over his shoulder, taking in the others without any sort of hint that their staring bothered him.
“Oh.” He paused, considering for a moment, then looked to the Arena floor. “No officers. Good.”
Then, without another word, he turned and started to jump up the white marble ledges that formed the Arena’s cushioned seats.
Aria watched him go, completely nonplussed, until Ward was some ten rows up from her. Stopping there, he glanced back at her with a bemused expression. “Come on!”
A second’s more hesitation, and Aria made up her mind.
Between her C3 Strength and D8 Speed, it took all of four jumps to reach Ward, clearing two or three aisles of seating at a time. When she caught up to him—well-clear now of the rest of their classmates—he looked her up and down with measured appreciation.
“To have your specs. Seriously…” He studied her a moment more, then turned with a sigh to plop down onto one of the nearest cushions. “So? What did you want to talk about?”
Though she could still feel the last eyes of the dispersing crowd below them, separating herself from the others had brought back Aria’s nerve.
“In class. This morning… You’ve been watching me, too.”
Immediately Reidon Ward’s cheeks flushed pink, and all of a sudden he seemed to be having trouble meeting her eye.
“What? No—Well, yeah, but—Hold on.” He caught his scrambling answer, lifting both hands with palms out in front of his face as though to ward off any additional embarrassment. “Okay. Yeah. I might have been eyeing you a little too long this morning, but it was nothing like that!”
Aria frowned, confused. “Nothing like what?”
“Like… well… like that,” Ward tried again, floundering.
“What are you—?” Aria started to ask a second time.
And then it clicked, and she felt her own ears go red-hot all at once.
“I didn’t mean it like that!” she exclaimed, panicking a little. “I just meant I’ve been watching you and it sounds like—” She froze, the heat redoubling.
“You’re not helping!” Behind his own embarrassment, Ward had cracked a smile. “At all! At all!”
“Shut up!” Aria squeaked, turning her back on him and marching off to drop down onto a cushion some five or six separated from his own.
Then Ward started laughing.
She couldn’t say why, but the sound actually made Aria feel better. She thought she should have felt annoyed, maybe even angry, but for some reason she didn’t get the impression the boy’s amusement was at her expense.
“I didn’t mean it like that…” she muttered once he’d settled down again, not looking his way.
“I know. I get it.” Ward was still chuckling, but seemed to have gotten himself under control. “I’m sorry. I guess I know now why Viv like’s making fun of me so much.”
Aria didn’t answer, turning her face away from him to hide the color she knew was still lingering on her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” Ward said again. “I do get it. I guess I have been keeping an eye on you, this last month, in a way.”
“In a way?” Aria asked.
“Well… Only because you’ve been watching me so closely it’s started to give me anxiety.”
Aira’s mortification in that moment was so extreme, if she could have dug a tunnel into the marble to disappear into, she would have. She actually considered it for a second, wondering what kind of damage she could do to the stone with Hippolyta.
It took her a full 10 seconds before she was able to speak again.
“I thought I was being subtle,” she mumbled quietly.
“HA!” Ward’s exclamation was so loud it made her jump, and the following gale of renewed laughter finally itched at her enough to get her to whirl around.
“It’s not that funny!” she shouted, frustration at last draining off some of her embarrassment.
“It’s pretty funny,” Ward managed to get through a broad grin, wiping his eyes like a tear of amusement was threatening to escape. “Between the two of us, Viv and I considered starting a game of over-under to see how many times we’d catch you looking in a given day. Even Catcher’s taken note, and all four of us are only in the same place at meals and the dorm.”
“Oh nooo…” Aria moaned, resting her elbows on her knees to bury her face in her palms as the heat returned.
“Oh yeah,” Ward assured her unnecessarily, and she could still hear the smile on his voice. “Can’t say I blame you, though. I’m a pretty interesting guy.”
Aria cracked one eye through her fingers to glare at him. He was indeed smiling, but the way he’d phrased those last words…
Whether or not he had meant to give her an opportunity to change the subject, Aria took it with enthusiasm.
“‘Interesting’ is an understatement, Ward,” she muttered, dropping her hands to look him dead-on, now, uncaring of her flush. “It doesn’t take much to get the distinct impression you’re anything but an idiot, so I’m going to assume you know the actual reason I want to talk.”
Down the row from her, Ward’s expression hardened a bit.
“That’s a big assumption,” he said, a little coolly, now, but there wasn’t so much as a hint of confusion teased in his features. “Why don’t you enlighten me anyway?”
Aria glared at him. She wasn’t a fan of games. Not when it came to matters as tremendous as this.
Still, if she had to play along to get a straight answer, she was willing to humor him.
“Remind me. What was your CAD-Rank when we fought at the Commencement?”
Ward frowned a little, and looked to chew on his repy for a moment.
“E3,” he finally admitted, though he didn’t sound like he wanted to.
“E3,” Aria agreed with a brief nod. “And what, could you tell me, is your CAD-Rank now?”
“E9.” The answer was more prompt this time.
“Yeah. E9…” Aria pushed herself up to cross her arms and lean back. Behind her, the support projection of the seat manifested to accept her weight. “In a month—a month—you’ve gone from a low-E-Ranker to nearing the minimally accepted level of a traditional Galens cadet. Six ranks. Before that, in ten weeks you went from an F8 on assignment to that E3 I saw at the ceremony.”
Ward’s brow creased. “You looked up my baseline?”
“You’re damn right I did. You had me in that fight, Ward.” Aria hated to admit it, but it was true. “If it wasn’t for Third Eye, you had me. Even if you ended up losing, that’s the closest I’ve come to getting my ass handed to me, before or since.” She peered at him more intently. “I checked your profile the minute I had the chance, and you’d jumped to E4. Then the following day you show up to parameter testing with an evolved CAD. Hell of a coincidence. You’re damn right I checked your baseline.”
She didn’t feel it was any kind of important to mention she’d pulled his assignment specs before she’d seen the physical upgrades to his Device.
Ward watched her levelly, clearly think
ing quickly. In the end, he put on an unconcerned air and shrugged. “You just admitted you know I was F-Rank at assignment. With the right training and enough hours put in, it shouldn’t be surprising I’ve caught up a little to everyone else in the—”
“Ward. Don’t bullshit me.”
Aria said it calmly, but the boy went so still she might have threatened him with a called Device.
“Most of the others don’t care,” she continued. “You were a curio for a week, but the minute you gave them a semi-plausible reason not to think of you anymore, they took it. All that’s left from ninety percent of our classmates seems to either be indifference, apathy, or just disappointment at your presence. But not everyone.” She felt her frown deepen. “Some people are paying attention. You’ve climbed eleven CAD Ranks in less than four months, most of them recently. That would be impressive enough, except you didn’t get ‘the right training’, did you?”
The change was subtle, but distinct. Whereas one moment Ward was watching her with careful attention, the next his gaze was sharper, more dangerous.
Choose your next words wisely, that look said.
Aria softened her tone. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be insensitive. It’s just… I know what your surname means, Ward. If you tell me I’m wrong, I’ll believe you, but if I’m right then there’s no way you had the network or the funds to find trainers for an A-Type CAD. My brother is an Atypical, too, and my parents had to spend a fortune on finding him a couple of decent instructors.” She did her best to get across her genuine empathy. “I’m not trying to call you out. I’m just asking you not to lie to me.”
Iron Prince: A Progression Sci-Fi Epic (Warformed: Stormweaver Book 1) Page 38
