Chương 3: Chapter 2 – Everything’s a short sprint when you’re fast enough

The first test was melee combat aptitude. A sparring ring in the center of the warehouse, padded mats, boundary lines marked in tape. Two recruits enter, one wins. The armor absorbed most of the impact, preventing serious injury. Unless you weren't wearing armor. I watched the first few matches from the sidelines. The recruits were decent, for civilians. The Crusader armor made everyone faster, stronger, more durable, and had built-in safeties that stopped blows before they would cause any actual damage.

The candidates were still learning their new limits, overcorrecting, stumbling, occasionally launching themselves across the ring.

"O'Connor! You're up." My opponent was a big guy, easily six-four, ex-military or construction. His Crusader armor made him look even more imposing.

"This is Recruit Hernandez," Cross said.

"He scored highest in the armor synchronization metric. Let's see how your magic handles him." Hernandez cracked his knuckles. The armor amplified the sound into something like gunshots. I stepped into the ring.

"Begin." Hernandez charged. The armor's enhancement caught him off guard, turning a controlled advance into a lunging tackle. He managed to stop, turning it into a punch. I sidestepped and caught his fist as it whistled past. I turned the sidestep into a spin, throwing him with his own momentum. He flew out of the ring, hit the floor, rolled, and slammed into the wall. I headed out of the ring.

"That should be a ring out."

"Wait," Cross snapped.

"Looked like a slip to me." Hernandez knelt by the wall, panting. He stared at me as if he'd seen a ghost. I glanced at him over my shoulder.

"Haven't had enough?"

"It's fine." He scrambled to his feet, rushing to the exit. He almost tripped over himself. Cross watched him go, frowning. Her gaze swung back to me, and something wavered in her posture. A hint of a collapse before she recovered.

"I'll check on him. You take a break, O'Connor." I took a spot by the wall, wondering what happened. I hadn't used any real force. But when I'd turned and looked at him, he'd frozen. Hmph. I had to ask him when he came back. There was no sign of him returning, though. Nobody sat near me either. They didn't call me for any more fights. The rest of the tryouts went about as well as you'd expect for a mage without armor pretending to be normal. Shooting range.

Compact assault rifles with targeting systems that synced with the Crusader armor's HUD. Without the HUD, I had no aim assist. Everyone else scored over ninety percent. I scraped by at seventy-three, barely above the elimination line. Spatial awareness course. A maze of shipping containers rigged with holographic kaiju. Another test where the suit's autotargeting played the game for you. I cleared it in four minutes, then watched everyone beat my time. Liam finished in under three.

Endurance tests came last before the final run. Calisthenics, obstacle courses, weight carries. The Crusader armor compensated for most of the fatigue, kept people going past their limits. But I had over a thousand endurance in the System. There was no amount of human-like weights that could make me break a sweat. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. So I held back and finished slightly above average.

Not impressive, not terrible, which took a constant conscious effort, throttling everything my body wanted to do. By the time we finished, the field had thinned to twelve people. Nobody talked to me. Nobody sat near me. Except one person. A woman in full armor planted herself on my bench, helmet off, pale face covered in sweat.

"Who are you bullshitting, mage?" Kara Yang said.

"What do you mean?"

"You aren't sweating. We're all in power armor, drenched, with people dropping from exhaustion. You don't have a single bead of sweat you didn't have six hours ago." She leaned forward.

"It's insulting. We're here knowing we'll risk our lives together, and you're playing games. Give us some basic respect." She got up and left before I could answer. I sighed. I got her point. If we were supposed to be a squad, they had the right to know before they got into it with me. The final test was a five-mile run. Cross gathered the remaining twelve of us in front of the warehouse. The sun hung low, about to set within the hour.

"This is your last chance," she said.

"The rating is relative to each other's time. Give it your all." We lined up. The track led past the warehouse onto a dirt field path, marked by blue flags. As I walked to the start, I whispered, "Winds of war, flames of peace, water is blood, earth is the end." I jabbed myself with the thumb in the chest, hitting a pressure point that kickstarted the heart.

"Asura." My heartbeat sped up. Originally, this pressure point was a part of an exploding heart technique. But I wasn't going to hit the other four points. All the doubts and thoughts vanished, replaced with adrenaline. The faster the heartbeat, the greater the stress on my body, but the faster everything else. By the time we lined up, sweat was evaporating from my skin. My entire body steamed. Sara, two people away, snorted.

"Looks like Mr. Mage has decided to actually do something." I took the starting stance.

"Everyone without a suit, cover your ears so I don't explode your eardrums." Cross glared at me, but something in my appearance, probably the reddening skin and cloud of steam I was producing, made her pause. She signaled her assistants at the finish line, and they covered their ears. She raised her hand.

"On my mark. Three. Two. One. Go." She whistled, and I bolted forward at semi-serious speed. With the first step, I broke the sound barrier, releasing a sonic boom. The depots vanished around me. I ran on the path, across the field, through the patch of forest, around the depots, and crossed the finish line. I stopped with another boom, the asphalt cracking under my boots. All the recruits had yet to make it past the depot starting dash. I motioned at Cross.

"Time?" She snapped to reality and pressed her stopwatch.

"Six seconds, zero twenty-two." I smirked, and whispered, "For nothing awaits." I jabbed myself in the chest, my heartbeat slowing down. Five miles in six seconds. A hair under Mach four.

"What," Sergeant Cross said slowly, "what the fuck was that?"

"Magic," I said, as if that explained anything. She looked at her stopwatch again.

"You ran five miles in under six seconds." I shrugged.

"Sounds about right." Her eyes narrowed, voice slightly shaking.

"That doesn't sound convincing." I didn't elaborate. I sat on the bench by the finish line and breathed it out. That finally got some sweat out of me. Cross made a note on her tablet and turned away. The others did their best to ignore me. The unsaid part hung in the air. There was no space for regular humans on a battlefield where a decent mage fought. It was one thing to know, and another to meet one of the mages face to face.

Liam arrived first among the others, followed closely by Gabriel Torres, a guy with regular-army-sergeant stripes on the armor. A guy named Manuel came in the middle of the pack, grinning despite obvious exhaustion. Nadia finished shortly after. Once they caught their breaths, Liam stalked toward me.

"What the hell was that, O'Connor?" I met his eyes.

"I passed the test."

"That wasn't passing the test. That was cheating. That was magic. You can't just—""I can," I said.

"And I will in a fight."

"Recruit van Hellsing." Cross's voice cut through the air.

"Unless you'd like to explain to your father why you were disqualified for harassing a fellow recruit, I suggest you stand down." Liam's jaw clenched hard enough to grind teeth, but he stepped back. Cross addressed the group.

"Congratulations to those who completed the course in time. You've passed the preliminary tryouts for the Kaiju Suppression Force." Her gaze swept over us. Ten remaining out of thirty.

"Return your armors. Tomorrow at oh-eight-hundred, report to the administrative office for processing and squad assignments. Dismissed." Since I had no armor to return, I started for the parking lot.

"Peter," Manuel said, falling into step beside me. His cockiness had been replaced by something more cautious.

"That was... something."

"Yeah."

"So, that's your thing? You're like Flash from Temu?" I snorted.

"Why're you here?" He sounded genuinely confused.

"With power like that, you don't need tryouts. There's no way you can't just call someone to get you in."

"I could do that," I admitted.

"But just as Liam came to earn his place through the standard procedure, so have I. I'm here to join the force and kill some kaiju. That's it."

"Well, that's fine with me." He turned for the warehouse to return his armor. I walked to my car. The phone buzzed in my pocket with a message from V. That wasn't congratulations. It was work. Today wasn't over.