After loading up, the trio headed out of the gear room, Jack toting along a big sphere of metal floating behind him. It was, in actuality, divided into three segments that he could easily split into large 'blast shields,' all connected to an inner sphere with thin, spooling tethers. This was a cheaty but instinctively natural way for him to utilize his spherical specialty. Why it made sense was hard to say, beyond that connected 'limbs' always did for obvious reasons. Spherical control anchor points did for inexplicable reasons. If he made a box and formed limbs out of it, it would be inferior for multitasking compared to a sphere done the same way. It was something about the 'smoothness' and fluidity as he gripped it with his power. It just fit in his 'hand' perfectly.

He kept some spare metal on his teammates, but he didn't conduct his idea about armoring up Bo and, to a lesser extent, Highfive, at least this time around. It was something he absolutely was going to do eventually, though, as the thin plates he forged were superior and would be an added little edge, in addition to being well-distributed material he could use when needed. He was considering something on himself, but it was almost useless for bringing to bear, being difficult to remove manually, and having the limitations of his Control range. It had use, but not as much dual use for the weight added.

But if I'm toting a damn service rifle like this, a shield isn't a great option. He actually felt a bit annoyed having a rifle. It felt like a distraction from his powers. Maybe a one-handed submachine gun was more his jam? He could have the extra shield without as many issues, then. Besides that, he was a good shot and all, but there was little chance he was better at sharpshooting than any of the lifelong elite soldiers around him.

Or how about style over substance? A sawed-off shotgun. I could go by the handle 'Mad Max' and wear cool leathers. No one would expect that guy to suddenly drop an anvil on them.

Highfive took a moment to begin the chamber configuration, in which they felt faint vibrations from the breakroom area. He also set up the vidscreen wall for Ira and showed her the audio controls if she wanted to talk to them all inside for some reason, though it seemed fairly unlikely.

After this, the training trio stepped through the airlock and back out, into a cut-out section of a simulated urban environment, either post-apocalyptic or war-torn, with numerous gored-out buildings, broken down vehicles, and copious piles of rubble. Great for cover, and Jack almost immediately reached out to feel for sources of metal, such as in the vehicles. They were well simulated. In fact, the environment appeared at least partially real. He suspected the simulation aspects were mostly to do with appearances.

"Damn," he muttered.

"Nice and convincing, ain't it?" Highfive asked, smiling, as he led them to something like a fortress, half a building, half rubble. It had gaps, but certain points were thick with concrete barriers.

Jack was slow to keep up. He was still getting lots of unusual vibes as he extended his senses, making use of Interpret and pouring memorite diffusely in sweeps multiple directions. This ended up making his hunk of metal gravitate to the ground and begin dragging.

From analysis, he was sure much of the basal forms, the 'spine' and bedrock of structures, was metal, but it was shielded or kept from him in some way, likely because — in the sim — it wouldn't actually be there. Memoria, or the subroutine doing the work, had a bunch of material-coated metal that it contoured into form. The broken-up look was likely the easiest.

But the other thing he felt was the distinctive feel of significant 'veins' of memorite all around, with the walkable area in a kind of 'magnetic center,' so to speak. He was certain the power of the forcefields was in some way conducted via this, though he couldn't begin to fathom exactly how. The amount and density were staggering to him, though. Memorite was something that was very thinly distributed for Memoria's purposes, pretty much undetectable even in Power Park. There was no question that these chambers were a massive resource drain. It made him wonder which could actually be worse in that regard: these or HRVR.

I guess it's a balance of two different things. Her computation for HRVR, and her raw, concentrated power for this.

Looking around, feeling the weighty physicality of everything, though, he imagined the realness of it was its own kind of importance. No matter how realistic VR was, it just wasn't the same, to something or other in the human brain. He could see why the PACCs were done in them. Perhaps as real as it could get for an isolated, secure, modular, and physical environment.

One thing was clear, though: only here. The complete explanation of why memorite was precious wasn't clear, but that it was more precious than gold and diamonds definitely was. There was no way she'd risk such masses of the material beyond her inner sanctums. That so much was needed for flexible power simulation explained why she defaulted to mere drone use on even the mid-outskirts. That was a reality everyone understood, but this did provide a little more context, at least to Jack. Few others could truly feel how unique memorite was.

Inside the bottle, the genie is nigh omnipotent, eh? But beyond…

"Uhhh, Jack?"

"Hmm?" Jack turned to see both Highfive and Bo waiting on him, everyone at a dead stop outside the apparent destination. Meanwhile, his big honking sphere of metal had slowly but inexorably crashed and stopped, too. "Oh. Shit. Sorry! Lead on! I was just, ah… getting a feel for things. You know…" He grinned suddenly as a lame reference came to his mind. "Getting my 'naut' on with the 'ferro' and such."

Highfive frowned and shook his head, while Bo 'tsked' loudly with her hands on her hips, both clearly disappointed in his turn of words.

Nonetheless, they soon made their way through a gap into the inner area that was apparently going to serve as their fort. Jack locked his sphere in place temporarily as he began reaching out to pieces of steel frame and rebar to start filling in gaps-

"Wait!" Highfive called. "At least let us fight one damn wave without going all geomancer on shit! Let's, you know, adlib our way through the fights. Don't prep too much."

Jack stopped, looking over at Highfive and blinking. "Okay, then…"

Bo looked at Jack with a kind of conciliatory expression. "You'll have to excuse him and his harebrained, contrived scenarios. I promise to set up the next one, though."

"No worries."

"Alright," Highfive said, as his magenta-pink aura spawned around him, "They come in ten seconds after my mark! Get ready! Faceplates up! We fight until one of us can't fight anymore, or you hit Unstable fatigue! We want short breaks between scenarios. Annnnd mark!"

As Highfive began talking, Jack and Bo put their faceplates up and went for existing cover in a corner with no entrances to their back, otherwise preparing to use their rifles. Once again, Jack felt off with the bulk of a rifle in the mix. He'd been training without one for way too long. Nonetheless, he soldiered on, ready to fire, while prepping his metal into two big blast shields connected to a smaller sphere. He positioned this mobile cover in front of him and Bo, leaving an ample firing gap. In addition, when the bigger sphere separated, darts and cables fell out onto the ground, ready to use. He figured Highfive was going to handle what mooks threw at him fairly well, so he neglected a shield for him as yet.

The countdown dropped — a whistle blew, for some reason. After a few tense moments, figures spilled from multiple gaps, all of them armed with katanas. They were somewhat in the ANP getup, but the blue coat was of an ancient cut and style, with a hood, and a very iconic metal mask seen from the inside. Even more iconic, eyes like starbursts gleamed from inside the eye holes.

"Division?!" Jack called incredulously, sounding almost hysterical to his own ears. Division was an iconic classic hero of the Chromey days; though, like most, he retired from active duty far sooner than the silver giant. His power was to make duplicates, which was supposedly rare. There were rumors he continued as a clandestine operative in the budding New Babylon, logically with the potential to be the very template for 'faceless Men In Black,' but it wasn't something that could be substantiated.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Jack was so shocked at the nature of the figures, all of them copies of one another, that he failed to fire, even as one went tumbling from Bo popping rounds into it. But it quickly popped back up to keep running for them.

"Yeah!" Highfive called, as he delayed attacking while the small swarm of a dozen converged. Instead, he was poised, waiting for a last-second charge like a linebacker on the throwball field. "Isn't it fraggin' awesome?!"

"Just shoot them, damn it!" Bo called, as she followed suit, tagging another jacketed legend in the leg, causing him to go down in a tumble and struggle to get up.

"Damn kids," the Division dupe grumbled as he got up and limped forward.

Jack barked a brief laugh even as he finally managed to pull the trigger and begin tagging approaching Division clones, copying Bo's tactic to avoid center mass and aim for the legs. He missed a few shots but hit home twice on two different dupes before they converged.

His feelings were extremely mixed. Shooting at a simulation of Division felt at once both wrong and comical, inhibiting his ability to take the whole thing seriously. He also began to question the use of a gun compared to his power, but on the plus side, he was sticking his enemy with internal metal to leverage at some point. The other major benefit was that it cost him no energy to shoot. That was the same reason Bo was doing it. In an endless wave scenario, it was logical to conserve energy. The capability of the first wave enemies seemed low.

Bo was a good shot, hitting four more, tripping up three of them, and denting the charge of bodies that pressed down on Highfive.

There was no more time for the big guy to wait. He burst at them suddenly and explosively with a forward-facing giant fist of psychokinetic energy, barreling through the lead and two more before the mass adjusted and dodged out of the way. The lead dupe was trampled and crushed by the grind of the sheath into the concrete, while the other two were slammed and knocked. Highfive followed up with a nasty thumb sweep on another, sending him flying away. After being passed by, the crushed dupe twitched a bit, then turned into a giant puff of white smoke, quickly dissipating entirely.

Jack had seen that before on videos. Division dupes were somewhat family-friendly about dying. Certainly a plus when one was simulating killing their own.

Katanas came to bear in counterattacks from multiple angles, flashing at Highfive's sheath and creating showers of sparks as Highfive grunted from the impacts. He nonetheless took them without much impairment.

"I'll slice n' dice ya, ya oversized infant!" multiple Division dupes called tauntingly, in sync.

"Just try it, geezer!" Highfive called back with glee, clearly enjoying himself.

Jack reached out with his powers and collapsed memorite into two katanas, soon ripping them right out of the hands of the dupes, who reacted in surprise. They were even more surprised as the katanas came right back at them. Jack's divided attention left him a step less precise, but he sliced the neck of one, who yelped and slapped a hand to his throat as he tumbled backwards. The other dupe dodged the blade deftly, slipping sideways.

Switching control fully to the dodged blade, Jack arrested the katana's momentum, pointed it at the retreating dupe, and utilized Throw, launching it directly at the clone with high velocity, from close range. Not particularly expecting it, the dupe failed to dodge, and the katana stabbed him in the chest. He grunted and was knocked backward, but kept his footing, as his inner armor hardened and blocked the majority of the weapon's penetration.

Nonetheless, Jack could feel that it was just pierced through at the tip. He followed up again while he had the chance, still benefiting from his backline position and taking advantage of the lack of distractions. He utilized Shape to flow the entirety of the metal mass of the katana inside the armor, then moved it up to the neck and formed a band wrapping around. Recalling that he needed to stick to lethality for the eventual team trials, Jack fought against his instincts and applied a lethal sort of pressure tight around the neck of the dupe. Immediately, the dupe made a strangled sound, and his hands went up to his throat.

Jack tore his control and attention away, at that point, confident the foe was disabled, soon to die, and needing to move on to higher priorities.

Bo had continued pelting with precision shots at opportunity targets, from cover. Targeting limbs, she somewhat fittingly still acted like a 'debuffer,' even withholding the use of her energy-intensive powers. Every shot fired burdened and inhibited their slowly whittled-down enemies. One dupe had more or less broken free to come for their backline, but didn't get far before he was tumbling on the ground, taking a nasty shot in the thigh.

Highfive had done a big rear-up and sweep with his sheath-hand, slapping and knocking the majority of those trying to press him. It was quite a 'tanky' type of maneuver, buying time and creating openings; his existing experience was showing.

Just as Jack was picking out his next target, there was a yelp from Bo. Looking over, Jack saw a dupe right in her face, already slashing with a katana, evidently having climbed over walls to get to her. Bo blocked it with her rifle as she threw herself backwards. The katana cut through the rifle and sliced the front of her vest.

Jack collapsed his memorite into the katana again just as the dupe was trying to follow up with another attack. The katana jerked out of his hand and curved back to attack its wielder immediately. Simultaneously, he quite 'randomly' tripped and pitched forward. Jack took the opportunity to position the blade toward his neck even as he fell right toward it. Dragging the katana with his full strength, on top of the dupe's facilitating momentum, the blade sliced clean and deep, causing a nasty gouge that squirted out blood. The simulated clone closed its hands over it, but it did not last long before turning into smoke.

As this occurred, Jack was already reading the likely scenario and moving backward away from his cover position. Sure enough, as he spun around, he saw a dupe drop down and charge him with a blade.

Rather than do anything fancy, Jack flipped to full-auto on his rifle and unloaded it for seven or eight rounds, trying to keep it as steady as possible, aimed for the face area. He saw multiple piercings of the mask on the face before one round passed through the eye hole, and the figure dropped like a rag doll a split second later, promptly turning to smoke.

Another dupe was coming from the front, charging toward Bo as she spun around and drew her handgun. Jack simply moved the blast shield — which was held entirely ready with the Anchors function — directly in the way, closing off the window the dupe was aiming to thread through. He had to come up short on his charge, adjusting and angling instead toward Jack.

As he charged, the dupe cried angrily, "You're an annoying little shit, you know that?!"

"I am, aren't I?" Jack saw that the figure had lost or tossed his katana and was perhaps aiming to tackle and grapple him. Unfortunately for him, his mask was of the Old School metal style, too. Jack took control of it and simply pushed back with his full strength.

The dupe reacted much as if a tall person had brained themselves on a closing garage door they were trying to beat. Oof. With a howl, he fell backwards hard and hit the back of his head even harder on the concrete. He did have a helmet, and was the sim of a veteran Non, besides. However diminished from the real thing that might be, the nasty sequence still didn't take him entirely out. It stunned him for a moment, and Jack took advantage to forge the metal into another band and close it tightly around the unfortunate simulation's neck. Game over.

"Holy shit," Bo muttered to herself as her eyes flashed around and took stock. She quickly came around the cover of the shield, though, and began aiming for other targets.

During their little scare, Highfive had occupied the majority, charging back closer to them and preventing any more formation-breaking advances. Jack watched as he shifted from a full-body 'grapple' to 'pinch' the head of one dupe with thumb and forefinger, then whipped and swung him upward. The dupe screamed just before Highfive shifted the psychokinetic weight again, dropping the head over an unmoving finger and snapping the figure's neck. His scream cut short, and he turned to smoke.

That was just a teensy bit terrifying.

Only three dupes were up, with two 'alive' but too badly injured and incapacitated on the ground. The three standing threw down their katanas and called, "We're done fighting." They glared balefully at Highfive with their starburst eyes. "Steel against a metal controller? Weakened and just a dozen? You fragged-out moron."

Highfive paused, seemingly caught in confusion. "Wait, what? I didn't program all this…"

One of the injured dupes, spread-eagled on the ground and bleeding profusely, lifted his head and said acidly, "You programmed us for an emulated personality, you cotton-assed amateur! I swear, if I ever find out about this, I'll beat your asses for real from here to hell and back, and while smoking cigars of The Devil's own stock on the up climb." He coughed and dropped his head back down.

Jack laughed, and even Bo let out a huff of amusement. She said, "Wow, I hope he beat the odds and is still alive. This is my kinda attitude."

"Don't speak too soon, you rotten little pepper weed," Division replied, now through one of the standing members. "Not one gritty piece of shit that trained under me liked it. Or me."

"And did you get results, you old and shriveled up sack?"

"You're damned right I did. Why don't you punkass lillies amp this bitch up and I'll show you just how shriveled up I am?"

"Uhhh, let's simmer down, actually," Highfive answered, hands on his hips as he looked on in amazement. "I didn't expect such authenticity for a sim, I guess. Think I'll turn it down-"

"Don't you dare, Fiver!" Bo called, raising an imperious finger. "He's a charming gentleman, and, besides, this kind of banter does happen in the trials."

Highfive sighed. "This was supposed to be fun…"

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