Inkblot moved so fast for the final strike on the paralyzed healer — still blessedly from behind — that Jack was slower to perceive the results than everyone else.

"He's down, he's down!" Bo called through the gestalt with excitement. "Neck strike! Keeping disruption going to make sure there's no bullshit while the knock-out is simulated…"

"Good plan!" Jack said, caught between a bit of relief and knowing they couldn't pat their own backs just yet. He kept his senses primed on what was happening. Eyes and his field both hot in observation, adrenaline pumping, reflexes ready to pivot.

Jack could feel Porker — who'd also 'shed' himself of Jack's metal somehow — twisting around and shooting quills; simultaneously, he saw Whippit physically as she turned and primed for an attack.

The latter was far worse. Whatever Porker could do, Inkblot could surely handle, but Whippit was scary dangerous, and Jack suspected she was high-level to boot.

The only trouble was reacting in time, because it wasn't like a Blaster attacked slowly. She had flicked a whip long-distance with barely enough time for Highfive to dodge, even slowed by his sheath.

And, naturally, there were no darts close to her. He could try to hit her in time. Or he could use the field, intensify it, and try to distract her. It seemed dubious.

But then his vision caught something, and his memorite senses caught up with him, too. It was a eureka moment and practically a forehead-slapping one.

She was carrying a sidearm.

He's spent so long just assuming his simulation enemies didn't have things he could trump matches with — not even these blind matches — that it didn't occur to him that real combatants would have metal on them, not knowing how bad that was. He literally couldn't make training that easy. At the distance, he had to actually think about the metal or sweep through people and their gear to really notice, and they'd been avoiding the debuffed Blaster already.

Jack quickly collapsed memorite into the handgun's frame, tilted it slightly inward, and pulled the trigger, firing the gun into her leg. He didn't bother stopping, either, just kept unloading the semi-auto as fast as he could. Which was fast.

Getting shot rapid-fire in the leg multiple times by your own sidearm served rather well as a distraction. Whippit collapsed to the ground, writhing in pain as the sim chamber protected her from most injury but certainly not all, and, as ever, simulated extensive debilitation as appropriate. Bullets would have been buried deep in her leg without a doubt, thanks to point-blank armor-piercers against the same exact point over and over again. The gunfire would draw actual blood at the least, and leave nasty bruises.

Bit of a tactical error when you don't know the team you're facing. Happy to learn ya somethin', rookie! Then again, there are probably a few cloth controllers out there, yet we don't come naked.

"Disrupt Porker, Bo!" Inkblot called in the gestalt, something translating a 'stiffness' to the mental words. "He keeps sticking me with quills and giving away-"

"Got him," Bo interjected, her voice a bit breathless. So many things one after the other in a short period had definitely netted her some fatigue. After a breath, she added, "Also confirmed that Meds is coup de grace'd and under simulation restraints!"

With multiple people down to varying degrees, Woody was inserting herself into the equation now, leaving Highfive still a bit jammed up but temporarily free to destroy wooden material, as branches started arcing in multiple directions to shield her teammates. With tremendous growth speed, probably boosted from before — by Meds to some degree — wooden walls were already closing around both remaining teammates.

Jack rushed to pull the handgun out of the holster, but his view got cut off just as he managed it, and before he could swing it around to pop shots into her neck or the like. He tried it by feel anyway and became aware of wood like a big box enclosing the handgun itself.

Shit. Probably mental communication warned her to go for it right off.

Jack aimed the gun at where he thought Whippit would be and started blasting the rest of the shots, hoping for a lucky shot or two. He thought he got her in the torso armor a couple of times before the wood compacted down, squeezed, and diverted the gun's direction, with no give to turn. It wasn't crushed, however. All ANP equipment was high-grade. If Woody had that kind of power to apply, it would no doubt take more time and focus than she had at the moment.

"The tank is blocking me from getting to either target now," Inkblot said. "Quills are removed, and I'm fully in stealth. Minor injuries. Chemicals didn't numb me. Mostly a blood agent, I think. Minor skin irritation for me, that's it."

That was good, at least. Inkblot was especially resistant to that sort of thing, and he'd bleed only barely from wounds for a brief period, if at all.

"My charge is up!" Highfive called. "One sec."

Momentarily, Highfive got free of the many destroyed, branching wood structures around him and got an open angle on the roughly spherical containment around Whippit. He shot across space in a charge of his psychokinetic sheath, which unsurprisingly was called: Rocket Fist. He moved with a slight curve, no doubt aiming to knock the spherical wooden protection further away from Woody's core.

With a full head of steam and Woody apparently unable to even look in his direction at the moment, Highfive slammed into the wood like a freight train, causing the braced wall to shatter and fragment in a veritable wooden explosion. Jack had a good sight picture of this scene and watched as the handgun was knocked free, and Whippit got knocked in the carry-through.

Unfortunately, with her enemy so close and the wooden wall taking the brunt of damage initially, Whippit could attack him nearly simultaneously, and her energetic lash could be seen slashing through Highfive's legs. He went sprawling and tumbling in pain, the 'hand' rolling him over the ground as it sputtered and went rather melty-looking.

Fortunately, Whippit had no way to follow up and got knocked a few meters away to spill into her own heap. With the effect of Bo's Sandy aura still on her, she seemed especially disoriented and slow to rise.

The direction she'd been knocked didn't help Inkblot out much, who'd have to circle around, but on the other hand, Jack maintained a visual on her for that same reason. He caught the spinning handgun in midair and sped it overhead and then down as quickly as he could, keeping it unseen as Whippit pushed herself to her hands and knees. The handgun was still functional and had two or three bullets left. Jack dropped it with the barrel pointed right at her faceplate and unloaded it.

The faceplate obviously cracked from the impact, and she reeled and recoiled away instantly. The last shot hit just below the first, by appearances, but she was already twisting away and folding down, hands going to her face as she writhed. The damn armor had done its job, but now she was even more disoriented, having likely taken a bit of a concussion.

With the gunfire no longer useful, and maybe in all honesty inferior to simply going for the throat right off, Jack began to transmute it into a band…

Woody hadn't been idle. Fearing Inkblot, she'd moved Porker out of the equation. Simultaneously, she hit Highfive with something like a flyswatter of wood, holding him down for at least a few key moments more, and she fired out almost vine-like limbs over to wrap around Whippit's ankles and begin dragging her away, presumably to get in range of more protective wood walls being rebuilt out of her annoying, annoying body.

Jack had mere moments to react, and Inkblot remained presumably just out of range in his own approach.

Even as he was transforming the handgun's mostly steel construction to something more fluid, he threw it on Whippit's back as if a splash of liquid metal. In the time that Whippit was being dragged away, Jack consolidated the metal into a band, collapsed his full and entire strength into it, and wrapped it around Whippit's neck.

He didn't even need to choke in this situation. He simply braced and locked the metal, anchoring it, at the same time that a quite strong Woody was dragging her hard to 'safety.'

She stopped rather suddenly, all the pressure quite unfortunately at the fragile neck area. He felt a vibration he took a moment to realize was her trying to scream. Woody let go rather quickly, but the sudden extreme violence was already done.

Jack felt something else brace under the band, too, and he understood the sim chamber had saved Whippit from either death or severe crippling injury. Which felt… a little weird and a little wrong, but orders were orders, and he was trained copiously to kill inside the walls of the sim chamber. In any case, the maneuver was totally legal, being easily countered with physical bracing to prevent the vertebrae damage.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"Stick a fork in her," Jack declared in the gestalt. "She's done."

"Yes!" Bo exclaimed, mental voice tinged with exultation. "Great job breaking the poor girl's neck, Jack."

"Hey, look, we all know-"

"Highfive! Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Highfive answered, clearly struggling. "My legs feel like they went through a grinder. Frag me, she packed a punch, bro…"

Woody had immediately faded away and retreated into cover, carrying along Porker and disappearing behind cover.

"Tracking them," Inkblot said. "Got eyes. Wood-only. He- She's protecting her teammate. Ah…" He trailed off distractedly.

Highfive seemed amused despite his pain. "Woody just screamed that we're a sick bunch of psychos. Also heard some white noise from Whippit's direction, trying to scream something at us. Dumb. She'll get chewed out for that. Lame ass, sore losers."

Jack winced. He wasn't sure if the rep they'd get for that little maneuver was good or bad. "Let's regroup. Four on two, but there's no way Woody isn't going to be difficult about it at this point."

"We owned their asses!" Bo exclaimed. "So much for being well-matched! Ha."

"They're a good team, I think. Strong synergies, dangerous damage-dealers, a good tank, and even a bona fide healer. We just pulled off a perfect trap. Anyway. Bo, care to come down with me? I'm tired of getting sight-blocked from this terrain."

"Yeah, sure. Need to get eyes on Porker to center the debuff on him."

They got down from the wall without trouble, Woody still playing keep away under the forest cover.

What followed was a grueling scenario in which they were not much in danger, but were somewhat inhibited with a weakened Highfive, with his leg injuries messing with his maneuverability and speed. Why that was true when he floated around in a sheath for the most part, Jack didn't know. But Highfive was constantly sweating and gritting his teeth as he fought, obviously pained with every motion. He gutted it out, though, and served to keep Woody from totally gumming up the battlefield.

Woody was vastly annoying and took the strategy to almost totally protect her teammate behind cover, trying to force them to deal with her first. It wasn't easy when she was nothing but a huge tangled wall of wood. Meanwhile, she also threw out occasional heated insults, calling them 'scumbags' and 'pieces of shit' and so forth, to which only Bo yelled back anything. 'Twiggy-ass loser' was one such 'zinger' distributed.

Inkblot was heavily frustrated by the defensive strategy due to wall-blocking, and he wore down with fatigue enough to even give up on invisibility most of the time. Bo did not find either opponent very susceptible to her disruptions, though she could counter Woody when necessary. She set up a few Highfive charges to presumably deal the most AoE damage, exploding wood everywhere. Which ultimately was simply fatigue. Lacking anything but physical damage, taking out Woody was a matter of forcing her to expend herself with power use. Regeneration, basically.

Fortunately, they could afford to conserve energy, while Woody absolutely could not, fending off four combatants at once.

A few times, the duo tried to set up some offense with Porker going for anyone not named Highfive. Jack wasn't having it, playing things quite defensively to protect himself and Bo. Inkblot could take care of himself, though by the end, he was pretty worn down and took some more wounds.

Woody also tried offense here and there, entangling or trying for suffocation with wooden enclosures. But keeping three others from tearing the constructs apart was pretty much impossible. Highfive could tear it up with ease, Jack could slice and dice with metal blades or compete with 'branches' via cords, Inkblot was elusive and could cut through wood with an empowered knife, and Bo could jam up growth and reinforcement before it came.

The tank eventually lost her aggressive edge and began to slow down. Even her defenses eventually became sluggish, and the team managed to rally for one of their typical all-as-one gank-fests on a single target, wiping out Porker with a coordinated grapple from Jack and a head strike from Inblot, Bo stunning him to mitigate the 'counterattack issues' involved in coming at a mutant porcupine in melee.

After this pile-on, Woody could do little more than put up a final, flaccid stand. Inevitably, she was reduced to a huge pile of blown-up, twisted twigs that finally stopped twitching and trying to reform. 'Unconscious.'

As the team huffed and puffed gathered around the twigs, with everyone a bit diced up and looking as if they'd run through a gauntlet of brambles and sledgehammers, the whole chamber began to flash red and blue, alternating.

The voice of the sim chamber chimed and declared, "Team High Life has beaten Team Darkwood Dreams! Team High Life is the winner!"

Still being a bit shell-shocked, stuck in 'war-mode,' it took the team a brief moment to react. But then they were soon caught up in elation, and began shouting and jumping in celebratory glee, and then hugging each other and jumping together, with their helmets pulled off and tossed to the side. Everyone other than Inkblot, that is, who stood apart and simply dusted his hands of wood detritus, nodding to himself in satisfaction.

They paused very suddenly as they saw Porker limp over toward them. His quills were falling off of him in droves as he walked, his thick hide abating down to reveal a much smaller, if still very athletic, body, clad only in underwear and a damaged, armored gas mask. He swayed on his feet as he walked barefoot to the pile of twigs and wood bits and looked down at it. He pulled off his mask and glanced at them.

Uncomfortable silence persisted.

"Good fight, bro," Highfive finally offered, forming a slight grin.

'Porker' shook his head with an unconvinced frown and painted his eyes back to the pile.

Shit. We didn't lose a single person. He might've thought he was being mocked. But Highfive wouldn't do that. Ugh.

In the ensuing additional uncomfortable lull, they saw another teammate walk up. A helmetless, fine-featured guy with messy, sweaty brown hair, still in a rather untouched uniform other than a big cut in the neck area, a bandage seen behind the shredded material, and some blood splatter visible here and there. The healer, 'Meds,' obviously. He had some sort of heavy sack in one hand and carried two shovels in the other. His eyes flitted around nervously at the enemy team being nearby, and he didn't meet anyone's eyes as he walked up to his comrade.

Porker looked at him as he took one of the shovels. "Where's Corroline? No one's saying shit in the gestalt."

Meds shrugged as he set down the sack and began shoveling the twigs to dump them into it. His eyes slid sidelong at the others around. "She's unable to."

"Huh?!"

"Would you just shovel our teammate with me so we can get the hell outta here?"

"Oh. Right. Sure." Porker began shoveling up his teammate as well.

"Don't miss any twigs. She would not forgive us."

Porker sighed. "Yeah, I remember…" He stutter-stepped suddenly. "Wait, that emphasis… did you just pun- damn it! You're an asshole, dude."

Meds didn't reply, but might've smiled slightly.

"Corroline," Bo muttered faintly, shaking her head. In the gestalt, she added, "Corroline is supposed to have some kind of straight-line power. Either she managed to sow some epic disinformation, or she got some kind of new mutation to make it more whip-like. Maybe a little of both. Anyway, we should go."

"Agreed," Inkblot said.

Nonetheless, Highfive raised a hand and called, "Hey, guys, seriously, man, good game! You guys are going to win the next one. Promise ya. You just went up against the chess master this time."

Meds glanced over as Highfive spoke, apparently trying to gauge the big man's authenticity. "Thanks… Um, fair warning, but… the girls are pissed." He shrugged helplessly.

Porker shook his head. "Eh. Corroline is. Ten is always like that in battle."

"Ten?" Jack asked.

Meds gestured with a shovel full of twigs, indicating his teammate. "Short for X-Tender. With a stylish 'X.' Cute, right?"

Jack chuckled and nodded. "Definitely."

"You the chess master, then? The mastermind? Or is it…" He glanced over at Inkblot, hand going up to rub his neck absent-mindedly.

Bo crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows coolly, in a dangerous look. "Why wouldn't it be me, pretty boy?"

Meds dropped some twigs as he jerked his head toward her, eyes wide. "Um. Well. Chess master? It's, ah… masculine."

"So, you think the term would be chess mistress?"

The poor guy didn't move or blink for several seconds, a deer in the headlights to this question of a very unclear tone of voice.

Jack helped him out by making eye contact and shaking his head suggestively.

Meds had his eyes shift to Jack, and he finally shook his head uncertainly, then met Bo's demanding eyes once more. "So… um… you're the chess master, then." It was not quite a question.

Bo shrugged. "Nope. That would be Jack, aka Ferro."

Meds deflated visibly, dejected at being given the pointless runaround. Eyes on the ground, he went quietly back to shoveling.

Bo had a look that Jack knew to be one of cruel satisfaction.

Hiding his own grin, Jack said, "We'll leave you to it. But, ah, regardless of the girls, your team in general? Everyone? I'm game to talk anytime."

"Yeah, for sure," Highfive said. "See you guys later!"

"Later," Meds muttered, nodding appreciatively to Jack.

As the others walked off, Bo lingered. "What's your name, Medic?"

"Abundance. Uh. Dancer for short. Callsign."

"Be real, dude," Porker exclaimed dismissively. "Everyone just calls him Buns."

"I hate you. I really do. I hope you know that. Undies. Yeah. That's what everyone calls him, by the way. Undies."

"No, they don't! They're not underwear!"

"Well, Buns," Bo said teasingly, "You're super vulnerable to my paralysis effect. Just thought you should know. Bye now."

"Wh-what?" Abundance asked, utterly bewildered.

She had already turned and walked away.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.