"Alright," I said, my voice cutting through the tense silence that had settled over our little gathering. I deliberately locked eyes with each of them in turn, letting the weight of my gaze linger just long enough to be noticed but not so long as to seem aggressive. The silence stretched for a few more seconds before I continued.

"Since it looks like we're stuck together for the foreseeable future, we might as well know who's who."

A king doesn't need to announce his reign with fanfare and trumpets; he just sits on his throne and watches the courtiers scramble for position, jockeying for favor and proximity to power.

The spiky-haired kid with the permanent scowl and the aura of barely-restrained violence stepped forward first, his combat boots thudding against the reinforced floor.

"Raphael Vargas." His voice was a low grate, the sound of gravel and broken glass. "My Aspect is Kinetic Overcharge. I hit things, they explode. Simple enough for you?" He cracked his knuckles for emphasis, the sound sharp and aggressive in the confined space.

The nervous kid with the datapad—the one who'd been tapping away at it obsessively since we'd been herded into this staging area—flinched visibly when all eyes suddenly turned to him.

His shoulders hunched inward defensively, his entire body language screaming that he was desperately trying to make himself a smaller target, to disappear into the background and avoid any unwanted attention.

"J-Jacob Williams." His fingers drummed an anxious rhythm against his datapad's screen. "My Aspect is Bullet Time. I-I can... see things. Fast. Really fast. And predict patterns, movement trajectories, probabilities..." He trailed off, his voice getting quieter with each word as if he'd already lost his audience.

"Skylar Amane." The blue-and-pink haired girl lounging on the arm of one of the sleek white couches didn't bother to stand or even shift from her casual perch. She gave a lazy, dismissive wave in our general direction, her brightly painted nail polish—a glossy deep purple today—catching and reflecting the harsh fluorescent light. "Phantasm Smoke. I make pretty pictures that kill people."

Her voice was flat, almost bored, but her sharp purple eyes never left mine, a knowing smirk playing at the corner of her lips like she was in on a private joke the rest of the room wasn't privy to.

The guy with the perpetually half-lidded eyes and the posture of someone who'd rather be literally anywhere else finally deigned to acknowledge our existence. He opened one eye with what appeared to be monumental effort, regarding us all with such spectacular disinterest that it bordered on performance art. "Juan Navarro. Kinetic Ace."

He held up a single playing card between two fingers.

"I throw things. They go boom. Sometimes." The eye drifted closed again, as if the sheer effort of introduction had completely exhausted his daily allotment of energy and he needed to immediately begin conserving resources.

All eyes in the room slowly turned to the last member of our impromptu squad: the petite girl with the cascading sakura-pink hair who'd been doing her absolute best to become one with the wall since the moment we'd all been assembled. She seemed to physically shrink under the collective weight of our attention, her shoulders tensing as if bracing for a blow that never came.

"P-Pan Soomin." The words were offered to the floor rather than to any of us, her voice barely more than an inaudible whisper that I had to strain to hear even in the quiet room. Her gradient blue eyes remained firmly fixed on her shoes.

"My Aspect is... it's complicated. I'd rather not—" She stopped mid-sentence, her voice catching, and I noticed her hands trembling slightly at her sides.

A deep groan of hydraulics echoed through the chamber. The reinforced gate dominating the far wall, the one we'd all pretended not to watch, began its ponderous ascent.

It slid upward with agonizing slowness, revealing... darkness. A yawning cave mouth that seemed to swallow the light, its interior dripping with moisture, the depths beyond were lost in impenetrable shadow.

The air that wafted out from that opening carried with it the scent of damp earth and ancient stone.

"Welcome, my dear specimens, to your final evaluation." VEGA's voice slithered into our consciousness through the neural link established by our Second Skin suits.

"Designation: 'Goblin's Nest.' Threat Level: D-Rank. Your objective, should you prove capable of basic reading comprehension, is to locate and terminate the Hobgoblin Chieftain within the generous time limit of 60 minutes. Do try to make it entertaining."

A timer materialized in the corner of my vision, its numbers glowing an aggressive red: 60:00. The countdown began immediately.

"Do try not to die... too pathetically. The cleanup crew finds excessive gore so tedious."

We stepped through the threshold as a group, crossing from the sterile, climate-controlled staging area into something far more primal. The dank, musty air of the cave hit me immediately and it seemed to coat my lungs.

The smell of wet earth and rotting vegetation filled my nostrils, mixing with something far fouler lurking beneath—the unmistakable stench of meat left too long in the sun, of death and decay.

Water dripped steadily from the forest of stalactites overhead, each drop hitting the uneven stone ground with a rhythmic plink that echoed through the cavern and created an almost hypnotic backdrop of sound.

My eyes adjusted quickly to the gloom, the Second Skin's night vision enhancement kicking in and painting the world in shades of silvery green.

"Alright, listen up!" Raphael's voice boomed through the cave, echoing off the damp walls as he immediately positioned himself at the dead center of our loose formation, chest puffed out like a rooster surveying his henhouse. His entire posture screamed dominance, demanding submission.

"I'm the best pure combatant here, and we all know it. That makes me the point man, the tip of the spear. We do this my way: we go in hard, we go in fast, and we crush everything that moves."

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Riki here.

Tried for a more immersive writing style these three chapters so please let me know what you think!

I'm always looking to improve and would appreciate the feedback.

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