Draven was understandably reserved during the ride back to the hotel. However, as none of his family really understood why, their concern was misplaced.
Once arrived, he robotically exited the van and crossed the parking lot. He then went to bed without saying a word. When it was time to warp home, Draven marched silently into the ship. Things were so bad, in fact, that Knight saw fit to join them in the passenger compartment during takeoff.
"They folded," updated the general, right as they jumped to warp.
Draven didn't react. Knight had to call his name and repeat his sentence.
"What?"
"Alpite. Your guy started negotiations with New Crown, so they dropped their ask to eleven percent."
Draven looked lost. "What are you talking about?"
"Scorching hell." Wardell looked uneasy. "Dray, it can't be that bad."
Draven faced his cousin. "Huh?"
"Your Xeno, Draven. Look, I get it's kinda freaky being a Deviant, but it's not the end of the world. Hell, this might even work in your favour."
Eliza and Shanelle nodded emphatically. Draven shook his head. "That's not it. I'm fine. My Xeno is fine." He drifted to stare glassily into the floor. "Everything is totally, completely fine."
Draven's family eventually gave up and left him the compartment. He spent the following thirty minutes tumbling through pointless, cyclic spirals, then forcefully marshalled his will to face reality.
I'm getting nowhere. I need to focus.
He queued his Screen.
*****
Xeno Designation — MAGAL
PARTIAL SCREEN
Abilities
- Void Blight [Unique, Offensive, Open] — Increases damage by 5 times and deals Blight (gradually erodes enemy protection while decreasing and disrupting Charge)
*****
This might be the most insane paragraph I have ever read, mused Draven. And somehow, the skynning classers blow everything else out of the water.
Abilities, as defined by the SC, were Scion-anchored, Charge-dependent powers. Progression occurred either through evolution or unlocks. The Fleet's Grid purported Romus' Black Curtain as the strongest in current circulation, stated, at its upper limits, to burn almost half his S-rank capacity. Maintaining it? Draven could only imagine. And it was no wonder, as the Duellist could summon sector-sized lightning clouds powerful enough to tear warship fleets apart.
Suffice to say, he was top three for a reason.
Swell, on the other hand, cost less. Depending on [Form], it slightly boosted [Force] for ten to eighteen seconds. Additionally, as a common Ability, around a third of all Scions possessed some form of it. Alternate classing meant Swell didn't have to be used offensively or defensively. The Scion just got stronger, full stop. Finally, the Ability was considered open, as neither solid contact nor enemy damage were trigger conditions.
Draven, scrolling through his Glass, pulled up its description on the official Fleet site.
'Swell [Common, Alternate, Open] — Enhances strength and durability'.
Basic. Typical. Unthreatening.
He referred back to his Screen.
*****
Xeno Designation — MAGAL
PARTIAL SCREEN
Abilities
- Void Blight [Unique, Offensive, Open] — Increases damage by 5 times and administers Blight (gradually erodes enemy protection while decreasing and disrupting Charge)
*****
Possibly the diametric opposite. Draven had never heard of Void Blight before, which, being unique, made sense.
Magal, for whatever reason, had invented it.
At Installation.
Draven was the only person ever to possess the Ability. Naturally, that begged a question.
HOW?
Draven wasn't an idiot. Despite his claims to the contrary, he knew he had a lot to learn. His database, while casually outstanding, still carried the caveat of public accessibility. SC vetted info drops were usually either harmless, redundant or propaganda. They inflated, impressed and intrigued while systematically omitting subjects of significance.
However, despite those gaps, he was certain of the Ability acquisition process. On top of being one of the most researched aspects of Xeno academia, the modern model hadn't wavered in decades.
You had to work.
You had to work hard, and you had to work properly.
Scions, especially of low [Form], had to spend months, if not years, constantly exerting a specific component of their profile while repeatedly visualizing a desired outcome, slowly but surely steering their Xeno through controlled evolution.
Need a shield? Time to eat hits. Again. And again. And again. Or perhaps their shots could use a bit more… zing? No problem; Summon and swing. Over. And over. And over.
A Xeno creating an Ability was extraordinarily rare. A Xeno creating an Ability without any impetus from its Scion did not happen, period.
Until Magal.
How?
Draven, tired of wallowing in mystified exhaustion, jumped out of his chair and opened a notetaking app. He needed data. A tabulation of all known, high-rank Deviants, which ones created Abilities, and from those findings, a realistic plan of action.
Alright, back up. Elementary meta overhead, he began, tapping the side of his Glass. Yolotov Principle: focals exist beyond function; they must become subjective tenet. Marry the mentality. Weaver mentality? Outpace and outlast. Weaponize the clock. Void Blight, as an enfeebler, subscribes.
He strolled aimlessly out of the passenger compartment as his thoughts aligned.
Tech check. I'm a Weaver split with a weavy Abb. Oh, application systems? He frowned. No. I need tax receipts before mindlessly flinging Charge. I mean, could be two? Five? Hell, Blight could eat half my cap and end up a liability.
Draven stepped into a dining area and propped his Glass against one of the overturned cups arranged along the back of a counter.
"I'm getting nowhere. Regen. Let's work regen," he reasoned aloud, rifling through a freezer for rice. "Point fifteen gives..."
He dropped the container on a table, waited for the stasis to dissolve, then dumped the heated remains in a bowl. After sufficiently drowning his meal in stew, Draven found a chair and collapsed.
"Ten?" he calculated. "No, just over. Eleven uninterrupted minutes for full recharge." Draven expelled a gusty breath. That was the mid-rank average. "Rezzes. But none of that means anything until I figure out Blight's ask."
He shook his head in disbelief. He could very well already be the strongest F-rank in the Fleet.
"Plus," he continued, stabbing a fork into his food, "I've yet to account for maintenance. The stupid Xen..."
Said fork froze on its way to his mouth when he realized that sitting across the table, appraising him curiously, were his cousins.
"In our defence," argued Shanelle, "I said hi like four times."
Draven blinked. "How long have you been there?"
"Oh, thank the stars," exclaimed Shanelle. "He's back. I was starting to miss your unintelligible rambles. Are you normal now?"
"Nope."
Wardell's smile was tight. "Everything okay? You took the Deviant news pretty hard."
"It was something else," Draven dismissed with a wave, then dug into his meal. "Just thinking."
"Obviously. Whose rate was that?"
Draven looked up, said nothing, then refocused on his plate.
Wardell's jaw dropped. "No way."
"I'm a Deviant, Ward. Kind of thei— our motto."
"But point fifteen?" Shanelle looked uncomfortable. "Dray, that's really high."
Wardell's astonishment shifted to suspicion. "Wait. You were working trigger windows." His eyes ballooned, then he gasped, "Do you have an Ab—"
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
"Shh!" hissed Draven. "Shut up! Be quiet!"
Wardell's hands clapped over his mouth. "No way."
"Guys, shut up!" warned Draven, watching their eyes inflate. "Just so you know, this is the exact reason I didn't say anything!"
"Draven, I love you, but you are the worst person of all time, and it's really not close." Shanelle tilted eagerly. "What is it?"
"Later."
"Draven, no. I'll take it back. Don't do this to me."
He could, and did. His cousins met the renewed silence with about as much consternation as expected, but Draven had learned his lesson.
Besides, he also had more pressing concerns.
SC documentation law mandated Attribute registry. Unverified Scions could not legally deploy, nor could they refuse without guaranteeing expulsion. That was a terrifying thought, as he also remembered a young Bulwark, seventy-nine years prior, proudly displaying an E9 Installation [Force] rank. The government carted him off for 'training', no doubt to test the limits of his focal. He was never seen again.
Draven, suffice to say, had no intention of carting anywhere and spent the remainder of the trip ineffectually groping for solutions.
Disembarkation, back on Kellao, was largely uneventful. The instant they touched tarmac, an escorted handler informed Eliza it was time to fly back to Sandia. Draven joined his siblings in glumly bidding her farewell.
So was the life.
They arrived home a few minutes after noon. Draven immediately checked his Netbox and found himself attached to a form sent from Knight to Masters. Based on both content and context, it was entirely ceremonial. The real determinants, like Jerry suggested, happened far from an application page.
So with school handled, Draven focused on Magal.
His priority, like any burgeoning Scion, was growth. He'd dreamed of Installation for years, and after being gifted such an exorbitant Screen, would do his utmost to make the most of it.
Kellao, as the capital of the Horus System and a top hub world, had its fair share of options. And not the typical, Terran kind with treadmills and metal weights.
Draven needed a Zero Zone.
The nearest, Core Connection, was almost two hundred and fifty miles away, or about an hour's rail. Draven was out the door by one, then spent the ride studying Rhyther.
She described Deviant progression as a decade-long gamble. Astronomical [Form] forced every decision to matter. A two-week pre-tournament boot camp could be misinterpreted as concerted development angling, unwittingly modifying the Deviant's Screen and throwing their evolution off track. Everything had to be measured, precise and purposeful.
Purposeful, Draven repeated to himself as the magnetic brakes kicked and the hovertrain decelerated. Today's purpose? Baselines. Taxes, limits, application models. What can I do, how well can I do it, and how do I get better? He exhaled. Yeah, doable. I can do that. I totally, one-hundred percent know what the hell I'm doing. He swallowed. For sure.
A short bus ride later and Draven arrived. Zones, as government-subsidized entities, did not require marketing, shareholders, or even public access. They existed exclusively for Scions to maintain a standard of combat quality, something the military would never allow the private sector to dictate.
They wanted the best out of their best.
Just over sixty thousand active Scions populated Kellao. In Draven's native Overgate City sector alone, four thousand. And every single one had to meet sparring minimums every month, especially if off-duty for long stretches.
Zones, suffice to say, could get busy.
Core Connection, however, only had infrastructure to permit D-rank combat and was therefore likely to be less crowded.
Or so Draven thought.
Rookie watchers were a niche segment of greater SCS culture, and therefore, most people weren't aware of new and upcoming prospects.
Most people.
The paparazzi crowding CC's entrance made him immediately uneasy. Camera drones polluted the air, buzzing invasively in a desperate attempt to get a shot at the next big name.
The hell? he wondered. They were on Kellao, not Cadmus. Stans shouldn't have been this crazy.
Could I slip past them? wondered Draven. Maybe—
"THERE!"
A pivoting drone caught him, and suddenly he was surrounded. They knew his name, of course, and his unusual Installation. Pleas to Summon or reveal his focal split poured out. Petitions of where he planned to attend. Someone demanded his sponsorship preference. Draven, conversely, focused on reaching the doors. Drones harried him with incessant buzzes, flashes and clicks while reporters crowded nearby, almost as if to smother him.
He ignored everything, pushed through the entrance and immediately scowled.
Shanelle, draped over a lounge chair in sub-Summon threads, grinned and nodded him towards a change room. "Took you long enough."
"Go away."
She snorted. "I had to fight to stop Ward from coming. Count yourself fortunate."
"I don't. Goodbye." He pointed to the exit.
"Draven, you're smarter than this." Shanelle rolled her eyes. "You need an academy or Corps ID to get in, genius. Unless, of course, you're hiding A-rank [Fleet]?"
Draven did know that, and had been banking on nepotism through Knight's name. Unfortunately, now that Shanelle was present, that plan was dead.
Great.
"We have Zone Three," she told him, breaking off. Draven watched her step through sliding doors, then resisted the urge to test his new F0 [Force] against a wall with his forehead.
Once changed, he joined his cousin. The combat area stretched a hundred and twenty feet by sixty in an oblong shape, rounding out near the corners. Typically, Duel-oriented Zones, like the one they occupied, bore crosshair-like divisions splitting the surface in quadrants and a large central circle.
Shanelle skipped in the ring with an eager expression. "Whoo! I've waited for this for a while! Zone, active!"
Draven felt the generator beneath their feet flare with Charge as the room vibrated with magnetic energy.
He faced his cousin with narrowed eyes. "Why would we need Zone protection? I can't hurt you, and you won't hurt me unless you try."
Wicked, serrated daggers flashed into her palms as she danced on the balls of her feet.
"Exactly." She cocked her head. "You should Summon."
"I'm not—"
Shanelle didn't even use an Ability. She was just there, then not. Her frankly outlandish [Fleet] ensured she moved on the very edges of Draven's ability to perceive. He wrenched his body right as she blurred past, verdrite bladework flashing inches from his cheek.
His high [Form] made Summoning a trivial, instantaneous process. He stumbled up into a crouch, scythes thrust unconvincingly in Shanelle's direction.
"That wasn't F-rank speed!" he protested as she straightened and reengaged.
Shanelle, not at all sounding like someone who had come unsettlingly close to shattering the sound barrier, counselled, "Bad dodge, kiddo. Roll with the movement. Harness momentum with your whole body."
Draven jerked clear of an uppercutting slash, then erroneously attempted to intercept her follow-up with his left scythe. Unfortunately, F0 [Force] didn't just pale in comparison to Shanelle's; it shrivelled and died.
The weapon was wrenched from his grip, and for his troubles, Draven careened off his feet and clattered to his back.
"Ouu," muttered Shanelle, trotting over to offer a hand. "That looked painful."
"Thanks," he wheezed, fighting to clear stars from his vision.
Shanelle tapped her chin. "You're using them like knives. They're not. Focals?"
"[Fleet]-[Fort]."
"Thought so. Another lesson, then. Never outmuscle. You'll lose, and likely in a terminal way. Divert, distract and dismantle."
"Got it." He struggled to a knee. "Can we—"
She again tried to sneak attack, which, as a Phantom, Draven supposed was to be expected. At least this time, she didn't move at Mach seven billion, so he anticipated the straight and parried.
Draven was then forced into a panicked dance as she attempted to relieve him of his fingers, hands, arms, feet, knees, legs, ribs, eyes and head. Survival became an all-encompassing pursuit.
Until, strangely, he... adapted.
Shanelle wasn't slowing, and he definitely hadn't sped up. Stopping her breakneck onslaught never became easy, but gradually, Draven adjusted.
Shanelle fought for laceration. Her style crippled engines of movement. She'd dialled things back to give him a shot, but would often mask her actual target with a series of flashy, attention-grabbing swipes before driving the goal on his blindside.
Huh.
Shanelle stretched for another patented straight. Now aware, Draven sidestepped and pinned her arm to his side. She scowled disapprovingly and braced to send him flying.
Draven, consequently, smirked. Nah.
Her momentary pause was enough for him to swing his remaining scythe in an overhead intercepted by Shanelle's free dagger. He then made as if to disarm, to which she simply tensed and stopped dead.
Or would have, since Draven actually used her locked weapon as leverage to yank his body up, wedge his foot against her cheek and lunge for his fallen weapon.
He clocked decent airtime before something rammed his hip and spun him ten feet.
"Very, very clever," she complimented, kicking him his scythe. "Just be faster."
He grimaced as he held his side, but even now, he felt a difference. Something like that would've put old Draven out for a week. Now, thanks to his armour and [Fort], damage halved, and he could already feel pain numbing as his accelerated healing stitched the clip.
"Ward was right," he groused, staggering to his feet.
Shanelle asked, "What's their names?"
"Who?"
"Your scythes."
"Magal."
"No, that's your XD. What did you name your scythes?"
"I did not name my scythes, Shanelle. Why would I do that?"
"To differentiate." She raised her daggers. "Kyle and Kyla. Your turn."
"Hell no. I am not naming my weapon Kyle."
"Then name it something else, but I'm telling you it simplifies improvisational strategy."
He considered her statement and came to the conclusion that it made sense. "I don't—"
He read her charge like a novel and preemptively countered with a scorching left hook. Shanelle contorted around it harmlessly, so Draven rotated to pound her arm with a side kick. She did him the dignity of a feigned stumble, but even deSuummoned, Draven's body shuddered.
It was like hitting a carrier hull.
She responded by seizing his ankle and yanking his hip into the bone of her elbow. Draven crumpled in a heap, groaning.
"Again, you're not fast enough."
"You have A2 [Fleet]!" he croaked.
"A3, and no. I mean you telegraph. You choose too slowly. Your attack speed will obviously improve, but I don't need Atts to disrupt your decisions."
Draven crawled back upright, then grimaced as he brandished his scythes anew. "Fine."
They got back home close to midnight. Shanelle repeatedly tried to get him to reveal his Ability, and every time he declined. She even threw a killshot that the Zone froze. He complained quite a bit about that.
Either way, as Shanelle's car shot them across the freeway, Draven made a choice. Fighting his cousin, while painful, had been invigoratingly insightful. He knew he couldn't win. Even deSummoned, she was faster, tougher and stronger than him Summoned. There was simply no physical contest.
And, more nebulously, he couldn't beat the system. He knew what paparazzi did to young, unprepared prospects. The ID check more than likely would've locked him out. Combat drones could only get him so much experience, especially compared to someone like Shanelle.
To win, he had to play ball. He was too small, too weak, and too naive to get anywhere alone.
He needed someone in his court.
That someone was, as usual, cooped up in his study until late, late night.
"Dray," greeted General Knight, shifting between scribbled notes on a propped Glass and a graph-crammed central Board. "You look surprisingly hale. What's the damage?"
Draven scowled. "Shanelle was your fault?"
"No." Knight tapped his Board thrice, switching on a wall-mounted Viewer displaying paparazzi drone footage of him entering CC.
"Ah." Draven cleared his throat. "Well, she was... helpful."
Knight briefly glanced through his translucent screen to survey his nephew. "Anything broken?"
"No."
"Mm. Well, you know my files are sensitive." Knight finished his paragraph, then tapped his keyboard twice to sleep his Boards, folding them into the desk. "What can I do for you, young man?"
"I, uh, realized something." Draven scratched his head. "You know how I... was weird during the presentation?"
Knight crossed his arms. "That happens more than you think. The transition—"
"No, it doesn't." Draven shook his head. "Not like me. I can explain."
"I see," replied Knight, head cocked. "Go on."
Draven extended his hand. Knight frowned. "Draven, Attributes are private for a reason. I understand you may be excited or apprehensive, but a mentality of independence is crucial to this calling. This journey, ultimately, is a solitary one. If you are faced with—"
"Uncle Damien," interrupted Draven, shaking his hand meaningfully, "please."
Knight paused to study his nephew, then said, "You're sure?"
Draven nodded.
Knight sighed, then climbed to his feet and rounded the desk. Draven shifted uneasily as his uncle grasped his proffered limb and squinted. Moments later, Magal flashed a prompt.
*****
Xeno Designation — MAGAL
PARTIAL SCREEN
ALERT — Xeno designation Zyrolis has requested Screen access
Accept / Decline
*****
Draven did, then limited the Share to Attributes only. Magal acknowledged his choice with a vibration, then he watched Knight frown studiously as the numbers hit his Screen.
Three heartbeats later, his uncle's hand stiffened. Draven pulled back as Knight gaped into space, almost in horror, then faced him with a dangerous look.
"Who else knows?"
"Just you," Draven replied quietly.
Knight, trying to blink away his disbelief, stroked his beard. "Good. It will remain that way until I say otherwise. Never tell anyone, ever. Not even your cousins. If they insist, redirect them to me."
"I can't, though!" protested Draven. "They'll screen me at Masters, and I can't deploy—"
"I'll handle it." Knight hastened back to his Board. "For now, keep training."
"Sure." Draven cleared his throat. "Question, though."
Knight looked up from his keyboard. "Yes?"
"Does that apply to my Ability, too, 'cause I've kinda already told them. Well, not tell. They figured it out by ambushing me in a kitc—"
Knight gawked. "You have an Ability?"
"Void Blight. Unique." Draven looked down. "I, uh, got it onstage."
The general did not move for several moments, then, to Draven's alarm, burst out laughing. He collapsed into his chair, shaking, and had to brace himself against the armrests so as not to fall onto the carpet. Without Zyrolis automatically limiting his deSummoned strength to E-rank, Draven suspected his uncle would've split the entire desk.
"You," Knight finally wheezed, wiping tears from his eyes, "are about to have the longest summer of your life."