STORMWEAVER 3: Chapter 23 Sneak Peek

I'm hoping to have this out to you guys tomorrow, but MIGHT have to be Saturday, sorry!

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CHAPTER 23

PLACEHOLDER

-PLACEHOLDER

“Okay. So I’m gonna try to lay this all out for us, and you’re going to stand there and tell me if I’ve got this gist of it. Deal?”

“Why do I feel like we’ve done this before…?”

“If we have, then it only adds to my point. Anyway: We get assigned not one, not two, but three S-Ranked trainers as a result of our sponsorship. Still very, very weird to say that out loud, by the way.”

“…Was there a question in there?”

“Don’t be dense. We get assigned three S-Ranked trainers, the leader of whom is the friggin’ Ivory Shield, of all people. She wants to train us as a squad. A full squad. Makes sense, right?”

“… Sure?”

“But there’s a problem. We’re down one. Our lovely resident hot head is in the hospital, has been for weeks, and we have no idea when she’s getting back on our feet. Correct?”

“Correct.”

“You learning. Proud of you. Now… The colonel has a decent plan. Pull Laquita Martin in, and have her fill for Viv until she can return to the team. Martin’s the best Duelist in our year, and has already been helping us in class, so why not? Seems like a decent fit.”

“I mean I wouldn’t call it a ‘good’ plan given Martin was—”

“Fine. An ‘okay’ plan. That’s not the point.”

“There’s a point?”

“Yes. And it’s that—somewhere in that mess—you and Aria come up with an idea. A crazy idea. A absolutely nuts idea.”

“Aria thought of it first, I just—”

“You just decided to walk all over Colonel Guest’s plan—the executive officer of the school’s plan—by putting it out into the universe.”

“Dude. It’s been half a month… Shouldn’t you be used to this by now?”

“Absolutely not. If anything I’ve spent two weeks in a constant state of shock. Time does not exist in this place.”

“Are you complaining?”

“About the years off my life this has taken? Most definitely. About the training opportunity? Hell no.”

“Then I don’t see the problem.”

“The problem, Rei, is that ninety percent of my day is starting to feel like a fever dream. One minute we’re coming back from Sectionals, and the next… well… we somehow ended up… here.”

“… Yes. Yes we did.”

Rei, like Catcher beside him, was standing in his combat suit with hands on hips, white hair tied back and head tilted to look up through the floor of the transparent hologram that made up the bottom of the Team Battle field. Having been FDAed first—Rei by von Bor and Catcher by Jetway—they’d already recalled Shido and Arthus respectively, and could now only wait for the fight to reach its inevitable conclusion. Near the south wall, Aria was in the process of trying to survive the second lieutenant’s careful assault. The Pawn-Class Lancer was shouting out feedback and occasional praise as she moved, slipping around Hippolyta’s shield as easily as the wind that occasionally ruffled the surface of the stream that bisected the Riverbank field variation. On the northeast side of the zone, in a thicket of trees, Logan had been lucky enough to meet up with Chancery before the Ivory Shield found them, the pair trying to use the heavy forest trunks around them to flank the woman.

It was the middle of the field, though, that Rei and Catcher couldn’t look away from. 

The middle of the field, where Christopher Lennon—Ouroborus only partially called around his arms, and legs—was being properly pressed for the first time either of them had ever seen.

“Good use of both swords, Cadet!” Kalus Laurent was shouting as he drove the Lasher back pace after pace after pace. “Keep them moving! Yes! That’s it!” 

Like Lennon—and the rest of the S-Ranks—while Aria’s brother wielded his weapon proper, his armor only covered his limbs, one of several measures the trainers had taken to level the playing field during most of their sessions. As a result, the sergeant major seemed only to be moving at roughly half speed to match his opponent’s own top end.

Which is still fast enough to make them hard to see, Rei admitted to himself with a sigh.