Page 69 of Guiding Reason
“I never wanted a team.” He took a deep breath. “Now I do.”
“To want a thing isn’t to have a thing, Hyran. That’s true with everything.Everything.”
Shoda came back, handing each of them a pair of goggles. Their champion and Conduit audience was filtering into the walled-off area now, some clearly just so they wouldn’t miss anything, others actually interested.
“You don’t mind a few people watching, do you?” Shoda asked.
“No, people should see this,” Taros said.
“They really should.” Hyran jumped onto one of the platforms and put on his goggles. “Any time now, Taros.”
Hound-fucker.Taros put on his goggles as well and hopped onto the second platform.
Shoda pulled out his screen and typed something, then gestured at the bots.
“One and two, activate. Display hit rate. Upgrade only. Guardians, we will be starting at fifteen per minute. We can see the rates displayed on your platforms, and the bots will update you verbally when it rises. Should I count you down from five?”
“Sure,” Taros said while Hyran nodded.
“Five,” Shoda began.
Taros knew what was coming for him. He’d seen panoplians train with the beating and fail, because panoplian nature was to rely on the innate armor and take the hits. The issue there was that a full-on armor across the entire body was difficult to maintain, even more so while moving, and depending on panoplian type, it slowed movement drastically.
At least I can slice this shit,Taros thought just when Shoda said, “One, start!”
The projectiles began harmlessly enough, not very fast. Taros dodged. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hyran blur and hit his projectile. The thing broke only to then splatter on the floor and flow to the edge of the platform.
Taros counted seconds. He sliced and dodged, careful to control his power and keep it to his hands alone. Before he got to thirty, he got hit in the shoulder.
“Fuck.”
“Too slow?” Hyran called over and dodged three projectiles in a row. For a few seconds, he was a blur on that platform.
“Platform Two, increase to twenty per minute.”The bot voice sounded too friendly. Taros hated it, not as much as he did Hyran, but it reminded him of too many of Targun’s training sessions during which cheering had been a requirement.
Calm down. You can do this. He’s too cocky. Don’t ever forget, he tried baiting you with Kashana, and that demands revenge.
Taros focused, moved, kept his eyes on his own platform. He cut down more projectiles than he dodged now, got a rhythm, even if there was no rhythm to what was coming at him.
“Platform One, increase to twenty-five per minute.”
Yes. I will beat you in this. I’ll win.
Taros stopped counting. A projectile got him in the back of the calf, in the arm. There were curses from Platform One as well, so it wasn’t just him. The AI voice raised their rate first to thirty for them both, then thirty-five for Hyran.
It went up in a painful process that was going to leave bruises, even through Taros’s nice new pair of combat pants. Forty, forty-five, fifty. Sixty was rough. Hyran stumbled noisily but remained on his platform. Taros was breathing heavily.
Can’t stop. Won’t. Have to beat him.A projectile came for his face. He dodged, hand up, slicing air. Another followed from his right, so he rolled, crossing the center point of the platform, got to his feet, dodged. It hit him. So did the next one, then he dodged.
“Platform Two, increase to seventy per minute.”
“You Hound-fucking bot!” The words nearly got him another hit, but he only just managed to cut the projectile.
“Platform One, increase to seventy-five per minute.”
Hyran grunted. Or moaned? It was difficult to tell, and Taros couldn’t take his eyes off the bot. There was no time at all to think now, there was just the pattering of those hits that didn’t find him, the satisfying feeling of cutting one, the pain of getting fucking hit.
And then it went up all the way to eighty, for the both of them.
