by Katie Vack
The matter settled, he turned to the final item on his mental checklist.
When Crayton had arrived in the mech, it had scared him. Not that he didn't like being scared- quite the opposite; but there were things he could allow to scare him and things he couldn't. When it came to anything revolving around combat, he couldn't allow himself that luxury. So, he decided, he was going to have to crush that fear.
He used an old technique he'd picked up back when he was young and vulnerable. Closing his eyes, he focussed upon his breathing, beginning to gradually slow it down. Once it was where he wanted it to be, he extended his mind to encompass his entire body. One by one, working his way up from the tips of his toes, he began to relax his muscles. His body slowly switched itself off, and his mind calmed. Only then did he turn it inwards, looking through his hopes, his fears, his anger, his resentment. He thrust it all aside- it was irrelevant, and he didn't want it getting in the way. Sifting through the events of the day, he brushed off all those he didn't care for until all he had left at the forefront of his mind was an image of the mechsuit as it stood by the door.
He bent all his focus onto it, mapping out its geometry, its dimensions, the way its silver hide glinted in the afternoon sunlight. He sharpened it further until it was almost burning him with its clarity. The shadows began to gather around his right hand, but he paid that no attention, instead maintaining his focus on the image in his head. He blew the image up, enlarging it until it was no longer a speck in his mind but a six foot mechsuit standing before him. The he superimposed it over the wall before him- no, not superimposed, but substituted. There was no wall, he told himself, just that war machine standing once more before him. He remained that way for a few minutes, cementing the image.
All of a sudden he burst into action. His eyes snapped open and every muscle in his body flared back into life. Without pause, he leaped off the bed and swung his shadow wreathed fist into the wall before him, smashing a hole straight through the wooden boards. Panting from the exertion of the lighting action, he withdrew his fist and brought it back to his side, ignoring the damage to the room, splinters in his hand, and the blood welling from some of them. Walking over to the bed and laying down, he prepared to go to sleep. Tomorrow he would challenge Crayton to a duel, and put an end to the process he had started, but for now what he needed was rest.
Because tomorrow was going to be a busy day.
Proving a Point
"So, what we have before us is pretty simple." The group was gathered again in the old guildhall, crowded around a table which had mysteriously appeared overnight to replace what Seth destroyed, and staring at a holo-map Karolus had downloaded. Grayson had to admit that they were a pretty spectacular looking bunch. They were leaving today in order to intercept the convoy the next morning, and so they had to have on them now anything they would be taking for the mission- namely all their weapons and armour.
Karolus was dressed in the attire of an aetherial shock trooper: massive golden plate armour, inscribed with silver glyphs and aetherial text, which covered everything bar his head and wings and was over an inch thick in some places. It was polished, predictably, to a mirror finish, and there was a high calibre single action revolver holstered on his right hip. The sword he had been carrying yesterday was sheathed vertically across his back, between his wings, in the only place it could stay without dragging along the ground. Not for the first time, Grayson found himself envying the weight mitigation abilities of the angels.
Seth seemed to have less weaponry on him than last time, likely because he had been carrying everything he owned on his back. His plate armour was a sort of dull silver, and while nowhere near as heavy as Karolus' it looked a lot more advanced. A bank of capacitors lined the spine, proving that it had a reactive energy shield fitted. Hellions themselves might be useless engineers, but most of their technology was gifted from the vasticians anyway and so one of the least advanced races was ironically in possession of some of the most advanced equipment. For weaponry he had a high powered DMR, a light machine gun, and a pair of large hand axes. His firearms, like most vastician tech, would be plasma based.
Crayton was in the same smaller mechsuit he had yesterday, and it didn't appear to be armed, although it would of course have a few hidden weapons for self-defence. Grayson supposed that the man would be fighting from his combat mech anyway, so the smaller personal one didn't really factor into it.
Neither Thief nor Sora seemed to have changed much since the day before. Thief was wearing the same pretentious clothing, the only difference being that there a handgun and a few knives were thrust through his belt. Sora had her bow and glaive across her back like before, and like before there were no arrows in sight. That, and the fact that for some reason she hadn't unstrung it, was still fairly intriguing.
Grayson, for his part, hadn't changed one bit. He was still wearing his worn leather boots, the trousers and shirt he had been given by Mahi and Aurel, and over the top of everything his trademark dark grey cloak. The only weapons he was carrying were the combat and survival knives he kept, and since he only used them as tools he supposed they didn't really count anyway. He wasn't particularly fond of weapons, mainly because they made it far too easy to inadvertently kill someone.
"There will be a convoy travelling from here," Karolus pointed to a spot in the southwest of the map, "to here." He traced the route up towards the northeast. "Aerial surveillance shows three vehicles. Presumably in order to pose as travellers, all are horse driven caravans, which makes things pretty easy for us. We have intel telling us that our man is in the second caravan, which means the other two are open targets."
He magnified the map over an area about halfway between the two points, switching it to a geographical view. "This is the best place for us to intercept them. It's far enough out that we shouldn't have to worry about bystanders, and the area is perfect for an ambush." He magnified it further so that individual trees and boulders could be made out. "The road runs through a valley, and at this point it goes a sharp s-bend of 150 and 140 degrees respectively. We hit them just beyond the second corner, and they won't even see us coming. So, this is the plan.
"We have two people waiting in the road around the corner. Our targets are trying not to attract attention, so they won't do anything drastic to start with. We'll also have one person stationed on either cliff, hidden within the treeline. Regardless of what our targets do, you will open fire on the first caravan, destroying it.
"As the convoy takes heavy fire from the flanks, the remaining caravans may attempt to turn and escape back the way they came, or they may attempt to break through. This is where our final two warriors will come into play: they will have used the confusion to station themselves on the road behind it, effectively hemming them in. Regardless of which way the target decides to flee, we will have a pair of fighters ready to take them down. Simple."
Grayson frowned, only to hear Crayton voicing his exact concerns. "It is incredibly inflexible. What happens if things do not go according to plan?"
Karolus straightened up from the as yet undamaged table he had been hunched over, switching off the projector and cutting off the map. "That shouldn't be an issue. If I had more men I could prepare for more possibilities, but I don't and so this is what we have. Trust me, it incorporates all the most likely probabilities."
"It relies far too heavily upon assumptions. Should they prove correct it may work well, but should they prove false we will be at a disadvantage."
"Yeah," Thief added, "what makes you think they'll do what you want them to? Suppose they aren't so fixated on remaining covert as you seem to believe. We can't deal with that."
"I have confidence in the information we have been given," Karolus said. "If I didn't trust it, I'd be too busy second guessing to get anything done."
Grayson broke his silence. "So we're gambling our lives, then. Trying our luck against that of our enemies. Sounds like a lot of fun; I'm in."
Thief turned to h
im, disbelieving. "I thought you'd be on my side. You never struck me as insane."
Grayson shrugged the insult off. "I don't take sides, I just do what seems right to me. And I like the plan." In fact, he didn't like it at all, but he knew that he didn't really have much of a choice in this matter.
Firstly, the rest of the group still looked up to him a little because of his actions yesterday. The easiest way to break their illusions of him as a leader would be to make some bad decisions; making intelligent choices would just reinforce their opinions. His hands really were tied.
Secondly, he'd decided that, for the duration of their time together, this was the person he would be: snarky, daring, risk-taking, and self-assured. It was one of his easier personalities to wear, and so it fit best with a long term situation. It was not too far from what he really was, and so it didn't take all that much effort to use.
"Good," Karolus concluded, "at least someone knows what they're talking about. I don't like your reasoning, but I can accept it so long as you'll do as I tell you." He turned to the rest of the group. "Are there any more concerns, or are you ready to move on to the next stage?" This time, nobody argued. "Good. Now we need to find out who fights with what, and how. I'm splitting us into three specialised pairs for the duration."
He clapped his fist on his breastplate. "I fight, as you can tell, with an aetherial greatsword, service pistol, and shock trooper armour. Normally close ranged but I can go up to mid. Next."
Sora stepped forward. This was a routine they'd all been through a hundred times before, and by now the ritual was almost automatic. "Twin glaive and longbow. No real armour. Same range, but I'm best up close."
Crayton stepped up. "You know me. Heavy vanis combat mechsuit, equipped with more or less any heavy weapon you need me to use. Effective at any range. Seth?"
The hellion stepped obediently forward. "Plasma weaponry, reactive energy armour. Any range." Grayson was mildly surprised that the lizard seemed to know what was going on.
"Close to mid-range," Thief stated, "and no real armour. I have knives, I have handguns, and I have this." He reached across his body and, in one fluid movement, tore off his right sleeve, holding his arm up for all to see.
Grayson moved closer, interested at finally finding out what he had been hiding. He blinked. "Is that a sword?"
Thief grinned. "Bonesword. Cool, huh?" Just below the elbow, the boy's arm ended in a two foot, leaf shaped and double edged, blade of bone. There appeared to be three runes carved into either side of the blade, softly glowing. "I had it inscribed when I was five."
"What do they do?" Grayson asked, only for Crayton to answer him.
"One rune of power, one rune of strength, one rune of speed. Three runes of binding, presumably all focussed on the same target. Interesting."
"Huh, what do you know," Thief muttered, "someone can actually read runic. Yeah, they add power to my strikes, let me wield it a lot faster, and protect it from combat damage."
"And the runes of binding?"
Thief adjusted his aviators with a flourish. "Let's call that a 'last resort' for when we're seriously screwed." He seemed to grow bored of showing off. "I've also got my tail, the venom causes paralysis over the course of thirty seconds." He turned to Grayson. "Your turn."
Grayson braced himself for the torrent of verbal abuse he was about to receive, but grinned inwardly at his deliberately controversial phrasing. "No weapons. No armour. No range."
There was a stunned silence, broken eventually by Sora. "What, exactly," she asked icily, emphasising each word, "do you mean by that?"
"I don't carry weapons." He did a very good job of feigning ignorance, although he was starting to get very nervous at how she might react.
"And why is that? Are you a sorcerer?"
"Nope. No magic." This was getting fairly risky, but as of yet things were still going to plan.
"And yet," she was practically snarling through grated teeth, "you call yourself a warrior."
"Actually," he finally let slip a grin, "I never really called myself a warrior. But if I was contracted into this group then-"
He never got any further. With no warning at all as to her intentions she leaped towards him, grabbing her glaive with her right hand and stabbing out towards his centre of mass, but it wasn't really much more than he'd been expecting. Battle-hardened reflexes kicked in and he sidestepped the strike, but she simply took hold of it in both hands, swinging it horizontally at throat level. He skipped backwards, bending away from the weapon and feeling the rush of air as the lethal blade whistled just beneath his chin. Sora stepped forwards, spinning in a tight 360 and bringing her glaive down in a diagonal strike to split him from shoulder to hip, and this time Grayson stepped towards her, inside the effective swing of the staff. He stepped forwards with his right leg bent, keeping his left fixed, and raised his right arm to block the blow with an outer forearm.
The glaive slammed into his arm, coming to a sudden halt, and Sora held it there, her eyes revealing nothing. Grayson focussed all his energy on ignoring that sudden pain in his arm- the block was intended to deflect attacks, but he'd decided at the last minute it might be more dramatic to stop it entirely and was now regretting that decision.
After what seemed like an eternity, Sora took her weapon back, putting it away again, and Grayson sighed wearily, standing normally again. "That hurt."
She ignored his comment. "You're a martial artist."
"Yes."
"How good are you?"
"How good do you want me to be?" He paused, letting the rhetorical question hang in the air. "What would you have done if I couldn't defend against that attack?"
"Killed you, of course. If you couldn't defend against me when I'm going easy, then you aren't the kind of person I want on my team."
Again, Grayson wasn't overly surprised, but it seemed a little harsh to be so open about it. "Lucky I'm good, then."
"Not that good."
"Better than you."
"Check your throat."
He raised his hand to feel his neck, and upon withdrawing it discovered a slight smear of red. He scowled. "Psychotic treehugger."
She chuckled. "Poor loser."
"Well, maybe if you hadn't just attacked me out of the-"
"Ahem." Karolus cleared his throat pointedly, reminding the two of where they were and what they were doing. "If you're quite done?"
"Whatever," Grayson waved the situation away, "it doesn't matter anyway."
"Good. I think you've made your point. But being unarmed still puts you at a severe disadvantage. I want to know how good you really are, and I don't want any amateurs holding me back."
"Lucky you, then, because I couldn't be further from an amateur. How about you," he emphasised the word, "try not to slow me down."
Karolus reddened. "Watch your tongue, boy."
"I'm not a boy. I'm a lumin, and-"
"And we've been here before- forget it. I just want proof that I don't need to worry about you."
"You want proof? Alright then." He smiled at how he'd managed to manipulate events. So long as his assumption proved correct, he'd have won. "Crayton? Me and you. Outside. I need to prove a point."
Crayton crossed his arms. "You do not seriously expect me to fight you in the middle of a hub city? Why would I ever agree to something like that?"
"I thought we'd gone over this- I need to make a point."
"I am not fighting you. I would crush you like an ant."
Grayson whistled. "You see you say that, but I'm not so sure. I think you might just be making idle threats." He quickly scanned the room for reactions. Karolus was going whiter by the second as he realised the way things were heading, Thief and Sora were smirking, and Seth seemed to be studying one of the floorboards.
The volume increased, but there was still virtually no expression in the man's voice. "Who do you think you are speaking to? I could crush you with both of my arms tied behind my back."
"Is that so? Bec
ause you're trying very hard not to fight me."
"Think very, very, carefully about what you say next."
"I think you might be afraid of me."
"That is it. I will fight you. I will crush you. You will regret your actions."
Grayson smiled. Everything had worked out exactly as he had planned. He'd manipulated Karolus into wanting him to fight, and then he'd manoeuvred Crayton into accepting his challenge. Playing off the man's pride had been a gamble, given how little he knew about him, but he had gambled correctly and backed him into a corner. Now all that was left was to beat his fears into the dirt.
"Then let's go, tinman."
* * *
"Please don't do this; not here. This isn't what I meant when I said I wanted proof." Karolus had been working himself into a greater and greater panic and was desperately trying to avert the public fight. As per usual, the rest of the small group was blissfully ignoring him. Crayton had stepped inside his combat mech and was rolling his shoulders a manner Grayson was sure was entirely for intimidation purposes, and Thief and Sora seemed to be placing bets on who would win.
