Chương 263: Volume 2 - Chapter 78 - Stimulation

The bridge of the Eternal Colossus was not a quiet place under the best of circumstances. Under fire, it was organised chaos at full volume—shouted coordinates, damage reports, and targeting confirmations layered over the deep shudder of the Grand Cruiser's broadside batteries cycling through another volley. The holosphere at the center blazed with the live state of the engagement, a three-dimensional web of red and blue markers shifting in real time.

Captain Seyne Ardara didn't sit in her command chair during a fight. She never did. She moved between stations instead—short copper hair pushed back from a scarred face, pale grey eyes cutting between screens and crew with twenty years of hard experience behind them. The old plasma-burn scar running from her jaw down the left side of her neck had long since become part of the picture. She was mid-stride between the tactical console and the helm when the rear doors slid open.

An ensign entered, moving with the energy of someone who knew the timing was terrible. He had a man with him. Civilian clothes. Short grey hair. A build that had once been something more. Ardara turned, and the look she gave the ensign could have stripped paint.

"Why are you bringing a Civvy onto my deck while we're mid-battle, Ensign?" The ensign snapped to a full UHF salute, fist to chest.

"Sent directly by High Command, Captain. I was ordered to bring him before you immediately. That is the full extent of my orders." She shifted her gaze to the man beside him and took him in properly. The face was a map of damage. Scar tissue covered a good third of it—old burns layered over by years of other wounds. Most of it ancient with one singular exception: A long cut across his left cheek, clearly newer than everything around it by an order of magnitude. Years old, maybe a decade. But fresh, by comparison.

"Who are you?" she said.

"And why did the Brass send you onto my Eternal Colossus?"

"Consultant," the man said. He hadn't moved since she'd started looking at him.

"War consultation for this Sector. It made sense to come to the flagship." Her eyebrow moved.

"You're not System Powered. But you were, weren't you." He nodded.

"Then tell me, Ex-Marine—what would you know about commanding a Grand Cruiser?" The laugh that came out of him was low and raspy.

"Nothing, Captain. I'm here for one purpose: Consultation on unexpected developments.

"Name's James McKay. I'd prefer something less formal than 'Captain and Civvy' if we're going to be working together." Ardara's eyes narrowed.

"McKay…? James McKay…? Why do I know that name?" He exhaled. Long. Weary.

"Damn Brass." He straightened slightly.

"Well. It's been a while since I've done this." He took a breath. The Presence hit the bridge like a tsunami—no source, no warning, pressing outward until several crewmembers grabbed their consoles without meaning to. Ardara stepped back two full paces, grey eyes wide. Then it collapsed. Gone. He coughed once.

"I suppose the Title had to come with some advantages, eh?" Ardara stared at him for a moment. Then her fist came to her chest—sharp, full.

"General Harbinger. I didn't recognise you. My earlier words—""Don't." He waved a hand and turned toward the holosphere.

"Let's just hope the Title didn't bring its usual—"" Captain!" The sensor operator's voice cut across the bridge.

"Three Stellar Republic Battle Cruisers have just jumped into the system. Intercept course with our forward fleet. T-13 minutes to contact." Silence. Ardara stared at the Harbinger. He stood at the edge of the holosphere, two fingers pressed to his temple, staring at the three new red markers with the expression of a man who had been here before and found it no less exhausting for it.

"Not even one fucking second," he said quietly. Then he turned to face her, spreading his hands.

"It would appear something thoroughly unexpected has occurred, Captain. Would you like some consultation on the matter…?" — [Shortened Excerpt from "A recording of the Eternal Colossus' Command Deck - The Harbinger's Return" — Compiled by the UHF Historical Division, PFC943. Classified: General Staff Access Only.] ====== ====== By the time Thea was logged in and ready to go, the rest of the group had only just gotten settled into their seats and were still working through the startup process.

"Kara, you want to put the calibration thingies on us now, or…?" she prompted. Karania shook her head without looking up.

"Nah, it's fine. The basic telemetry from the VR-Sim itself will be enough for the baselines. I'll put the calibration'thingies' on you all when I hand out the stims."

"Oh man, it's been a while since I've logged into Wildmaws…" Desmond said, mostly to himself, from the other end of the booth.

"Hope I remember my password—ah, biometric login. Perfect." Thea leaned past Karania to look at him.

"You any good?"

"I beat all my brothers pretty much every time," he shrugged.

"Not sure how much that says, honestly. But I always loved playing it—and watching, especially. Some of the tournament broadcasts were genuinely so damn exciting." She nodded at that. They really had been. The shoutcasters especially—professional commentators, essentially—had always been one of the best parts of the tournament scene. Criminally underrated in the grand scheme of things, but without them the broadcasts would have been a fraction as enjoyable.

"Wait…" Desmond said suddenly, apparently having caught sight of something on her screen as he had looked back at her." MissyMoonlightMayhem …?" He said it to no one in particular.

"Why does that sound so familiar…?" Thea's attention split in two directions at once. First—the fact that Desmond might have actually heard her username before was genuinely interesting. How? And from where? But second, and potentially more important: She'd caught a slight hitch in Evelyne's breathing the moment the name had left his mouth.

Something she almost certainly would have missed if she hadn't already been paying close attention to both her and Kara after everything that had happened during this session so far.

'Why did she react like that?' Thea thought, brows drawing together under the VR helmet.' To Desmond asking about my username, of all things…? I'm missing something here.' Evelyne hadn't reacted to her Wildmaws login before—not once across the dozen-plus hours they'd already spent in the game together.' So why now? What's different about Desmond asking about the name out loud like this…?' Desmond had gone quiet for a moment, visibly thinking. Then his eyes suddenly went wide.

"Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Wait!

"Desmond turned to look at her." You are fucking MissyMoonlightMayhem?!" At the exact same moment, Evelyne's heartrate spiked—sharp and immediate. Then, just as quickly, it smoothed back out to something calm.

'That's… unnatural,' Thea noted curiously.

'What's going on with her?' He stared.

"How did you never even mention that? What the fuck?"

"What's going on?" Lucas asked, pulling his attention away from his own setup. Karania looked up from her own with a similar expression as well. Desmond pointed at Thea.

"She's the MissyMoonlightMayhem. The MMM." Neither of them reacted at all except raising an eyebrow at him as if he was speaking in tongues. Desmond's face shifted through several emotions in quick succession before landing on pained disbelief. He groaned, long and audible, and dragged a hand down his face.

"MMM is a professional gamer at the Galactic Champion level. She won a damn Galactic Tournament!" He looked between Lucas and Karania like he was trying to determine which of them had failed him more.

"I remember the name from some of the tournament broadcasts—I saw her stats on the streams. She was all over the coverage in one of them!"

"I mean… I did mention I was pretty decent at games," Thea offered.

"And that I'd won tournaments before—""There is a massive, Emperor-fucking difference," Desmond said, his voice climbing, "between ' decent at games', ' some tournaments'—especially coming from a Midworld Undercity denizen, no offense—and winning the Galactic Tournaments, Thea! How was anyone supposed to know you meant those ones and not some small-scale local thing at whatever arcade you grew up in?!"

"What are those Galactic Tournaments exactly?" Lucas asked, with the expression of someone who had heard the term before but couldn't really place it.

"I think I've seen them mentioned on the GalNet before, but never really looked into it..." Desmond turned to him with the energy of someone who had been waiting for this exact question.

"They're exactly what they sound like: Tournaments spanning the entire galaxy-wide playerbase of whatever game they're set in. And let me reiterate this: Not just UHF space— everywhere the GalNet reaches. The winner is, quite literally, the best player in the entire damn galaxy." He turned and pointed at Thea.

"And she won one. She's not just'decent' at this stuff. She's literally the best there is!" Thea shifted in her seat under the collective weight of everyone looking at her all of a sudden. It was—a lot. She appreciated the recognition in a vague, uncomfortable way, but Desmond had also gotten the number wrong, and that was something she couldn't quite let sit.

"Actually," she muttered, not quite meeting anyone's eyes, "I won like... four. Five, if you count the time the actual winner got DQ'd after the fact for cheating." If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. The silence that followed had a very specific quality to it. It stretched for quite a few more seconds longer than was comfortable. Lucas broke it with a short chuckle.

"Well..." He shook his head slowly.

"I guess that at least explains some of the things you've been pulling off in there. Even Evelyne seemed surprised at half of it, and she's clearly more into this whole gaming side of things than even Desmond." He turned toward Evelyne with a nod.

"Makes a lot more sense now, in hindsight, eh?"

"Y—yes," Evelyne said, with a small nod.

"It does make quite a bit more sense now."

'Does it though…?' Thea turned that over quietly while the conversation started picking back up around her. Lucas' offhand comment—that Evelyne had always been more in tune with the gaming side than even Desmond was—had snagged on something. Because if that was true, then why hadn't Evelyne reacted to the MMM name before now? Not once, across all the hours they'd spent in the simulation together. And then the pieces started clicking together. Their first meeting.

Evelyne asking for an autograph on a special edition poster—one specifically depicting a Galactic Championship win. Not a general MMM print. That one, specifically. The way she'd asked for no Credits or anything "real" as payment, only the chance to have one-on-one conversations, to ask about her build, her approach to the Allbright System. The way she'd never really looked particularly surprised at anything Thea did inside the simulations—not really, even when everyone else had… As if she had simply expected it.

'She knew…' She'd known from the start. She hadn't been a fan of Thea—not Thea the Recruit, not Thea the person. She'd been a fan of Thea, as MMM. And when Desmond had said the name out loud just now, she'd panicked at the idea that the others might connect the dots and expose her before she was ready for that conversation. It was the most logical conclusion by a significant margin in Thea's mind. She sat with it for a moment.' So… Is this a problem?' Evelyne had been genuinely helpful.

She hadn't done anything harmful. The only real lie was the framing of their first meeting and her intent, the second of which only partially—and even that wasn't malicious, just… Not entirely honest.

'Is a lie like that actually a lie? Or is it one of those white lies the Old Man talked about? The kind that shields someone from an uncomfortable truth they weren't ready to bring up yet…?' She didn't have a clean answer yet. And even if she ended up with one soon—now wasn't the time. Evelyne was still needed, and pushing on this before the Challenges were dealt with wasn't a risk worth taking. She filed it away carefully, right next to everything else about Evelyne that hadn't fully resolved itself yet.

Thea did a quick check around the booth—"Everyone good to go?" —which finally broke the lingering current of conversation around her apparent status as a Galactic Champion-level player, everyone giving nods or short confirmations and pulling their attention back to the task at hand. They loaded in. The Wildmaws arena materialised around them, and from that point the session shifted into something far more deliberate and focused than the conversations had been so far.

With Evelyne's guidance shaping the direction, Lucas became the clear centre of gravity for everything they were doing—the one being stress-tested from every angle they could think of. They started simple, of course. Lucas against Karania, then Lucas against Desmond—one-on-one bouts designed less to win and more to get a read on how he moved, how he held ground, how he responded to different styles of pressure. It was useful baseline material, even if he lost every fight. But that was a given, considering his Role.

From there, Thea started layering in NPCs via the Wildmaws' simulation—a single person to protect while pushing through a handful of enemies, then more enemies, then a larger group, then multiple objectives at once. Each addition made the training feel less and less like a game and more like something akin to a real Battlefield or Digital Mission, as the arena slowly transformed into more elaborate locales with dug trenches, pill-boxes and similar UHF-inspired defensive designs.

The ranged enemies in Wildmaws used crossbows and bows rather than anything modern of course—it was still a fantasy title at its core, after all—but the principles of protecting against incoming ranged attacks translated well enough, and after a few hours of escalating scenarios, the training was starting to really become intense for everyone involved. Four hours in, they pulled out for the first time.

Back in the booth, drinks and snacks distributed, Karania had her datapad open before anyone had fully settled back into their seats. She worked through her notes quietly for a moment, then looked up.

"Where do we think the training needs to go from here? Honest takes, all of you." Lucas shrugged, breathing heavily and still recovering from the sheer beating he'd been put through over the past few hours.

"I'm good with whatever you guys think is best, I guess…"

"More unorthodox pressure," Desmond said, without much hesitation.

"He needs opponents that don't follow clean attack patterns. Drones, specifically—if I'm being honest." Lucas gave him a flat look.

"Of course the Drone Operator thinks it should be drones."

"Am I wrong, though?"

"No."

"No." Evelyne and Thea answered at exactly the same moment. They both paused, eyes meeting briefly in mild surprise, before Thea nodded for her to go ahead.

"R—right… ehhh…" Evelyne cleared her throat lightly.

"As I was saying: No, you're not wrong." She settled her hands in her lap as she continued—slightly trembling, Thea noted, her Perception still quietly tracking both her and Karania out of habit. Karania hadn't shown anything unusual since returning to the booth. Evelyne, on the other hand, was a more complicated read.

Either there were genuine threads behind her story—like her being an actually massive fan, which would explain her nervous and anxious behavior around Thea—or she was an extraordinarily good actor across the board. She still wasn't entirely sure which one she was believing to be true, but she had a definite favourite in the first.

"Lucas has a genuinely solid foundation when it comes to protecting people behind him—the instincts are clearly there and the execution is generally positive. But right now he has no real threat component of his own. He's purely reactive. An opponent like a Drone Operator exposes that faster than almost anything else, because there's nothing straightforward to push back against—nothing he can plant himself in front of and hold. That gap needs to be addressed." Thea nodded and then chimed in.

"Exactly how I would've put it, honestly... And I'll be direct about the rest of it: As much as I think Lucas is a good Defensive Heavy, I don't think he has what it takes to beat Rachel in the squad-based portion of the Challenge yet—not even close." She kept her voice even, purposefully trying not to sound unkind.

"We did some duel work earlier where things were relatively contained, and he already struggled more against Desmond than he did against my faux-Rachel. And that's a big problem, because the squad mission is going to be a lot less contained than a simple one-versus-one. It's not just an equipment issue or an Abilities issue either—it's fundamentally a mentality issue. A Defensive Heavy facing a Drone Operator can't just absorb pressure and wait.

They have to be willing to close distance, to threaten, to be something the Operator actually has to account for and deal with, rather than simply work around. Lucas doesn't have that mindset yet." A beat of silence filled the room, with everyone simply staring at Thea.

'They have probably never heard me speak this honestly about anything, huh…?' She couldn't help but think, slightly squirming under the attention.

"... Yeah," Lucas finally said.

"I know. It's something we'll definitely have to fix up. Any ideas on how?" He didn't sound thrilled about it, but he didn't argue the point either. Karania finished writing, put away her datapad, and looked around the group.

"I think we've got enough to work with. Let's get back in and see what we can do about it…" Karania's idea was straightforward enough in concept, even more exhausting than the previous hours had been in practice. She put Lucas into repeated situations where passive defence simply wasn't an option at all—where the only way to protect the people behind him was to move forward himself. Timed flanking maneuvers that could only be resolved by pushing out to cut them off.

Specific Ability combinations, sourced by Thea through the Sovereign and her own prior knowledge of Wildmaws' mechanics, that caused enemies to largely ignore Lucas unless he actively came at them—making him invisible as a threat until he actively chose to become one. And when those weren't enough for her anymore, entirely new parameters got introduced.

A chasing wall of flame that crept steadily forward, robbing Lucas of his default instinct—planting himself, standing tall, absorbing everything coming his way—and forcing him and every NPC behind him to keep moving, keep pushing, never stop. It was clearly uncomfortable for him. But more importantly, it was also clearly working. Slowly, over the course of roughly two hours, something started to shift. The hesitation before committing to a push got shorter. The decisions got cleaner.

He was getting the hang of it—reluctantly, grindingly, but steadily. Around that time was when they took their second break. Back in the booth, Karania wasted no time, as she seldom did. She moved through the group with the calibration patches first, pressing one onto each of them with clearly practiced efficiency, then produced the small box of combat stims.

"These aren't particularly powerful," she said, already prepping the first syringe.

"General Attribute enhancement across the board—roughly five percent on top of your current spread. Duration is around thirty minutes."

"How much did these run you?" Desmond asked carefully, eyeing the box.

"Around a hundred and fifty Credits each." A brief, collective hesitation moved through the booth.

"Kara, that's—" Thea started.

"That's what I bought them for," Karania insisted, without looking up.

"There isn't a lot I can spend my Credits on as a Medic outside of medicine and stims. This test is exactly the kind of thing they're meant for. So." She looked around the group.

"Any other concerns?" Nobody said anything further. What did catch Thea slightly off guard was Evelyne, however. Throughout most of the session she'd occupied a specific role—consultant, observer, someone to ask when questions came up about the Challenge specifics. Largely sidelined when it came to the actual training. But the moment Karania produced the stims, something had visibly shifted in her.

She was immediately engaged, immediately hands-on, visibly interested in being part of the testing cycle in a way she hadn't been about anything else today.

'Interesting…' Once they were back inside and Karania had them running test courses to establish stim baselines, it became even more apparent. Evelyne wasn't simply participating—she was genuinely going for it, giving the obstacle courses everything she had. And it very much showed. She beat everyone's times. It wasn't even close.

Thea herself and Desmond being outpaced in a physical competition like this wasn't particularly surprising—both of them had invested the bulk of their Attributes outside of Strength, with only marginal investment in Finesse, and the courses leaned heavily on both. But Evelyne also somehow beat Lucas, whose presumed Strength advantage should have given him at least a leg up on the more physically demanding sections.

"Alright, what's your Attribute spread?" Desmond asked, pointing at her, still heavily out of breath. Evelyne smiled pleasantly, seemingly not out of breath at all, despite her shocking performance.

"I'd prefer not to say." He groaned. Thea, though, didn't blame her for a second. Keeping that kind of information close was exactly the right call—especially aboard a ship where Challenges could be issued at essentially any time. What you didn't share couldn't be used against you… Just like they were using Rachel's Attribute makeup in their training against her, courtesy of Evelyne.' Makes sense that she, of all people, would know the importance of keeping your stats a secret…

I wonder if she has any of our Attribute spreads by now…?' Thea couldn't help but think, but filed it away under yet another thing she'd have to keep an eye on in regards to the enigmatic girl. Karania continued to run them through everything methodically after that. Combat simulations first—simple NPCs, but a lot of them, enough to put genuine pressure on everyone's decision-making and movement rather than just their raw stats.

Then she cycled Lucas back through the earlier exercises specifically, watching for any measurable difference in how he moved, how quickly he committed to pushes, how long he could sustain the kind of aggressive positioning they'd spent the last two hours drilling into him. She had everyone repeat certain sequences multiple times, cross-referencing the biometric data from the patches with what she was seeing on screen, making quiet notes throughout.

Even after the stims wore off, she kept them going—measuring the dissipation speed, establishing a fresh baseline to compare against, tracking how quickly everyone's performance metrics drifted back toward their pre-stim numbers. It was thorough in the specific way that Karania was thorough about things she cared about, which meant it left very little room for gaps. After roughly an hour of it all, she sat back, reviewed her notes, and looked genuinely satisfied with what she had.

"They work," she said, simply.

"The stims function inside the simulation. Full, measurable effect." That had everyone's attention. A five percent increase across the board was, on paper, a modest number at best. In practice, however, spread across an entire squad going into a high-stakes encounter, and especially considering it applied after all of their own bonuses from Levels and such, it was anything but modest. Most combat situations—real ones—rarely stretched past the thirty-minute mark.

If every member of Alpha Squad carried at least one stim into the next Assessment, the collective boost to their overall performance would be very significant—especially because this was, as Kara had said, one of the weaker stims available to the Medic side of things, apparently. Everyone around the table during their break agreed on that without much debate.

"You should pass this along to your squad as well," Thea said, glancing toward Evelyne.

"If you can get your hands on them before the Assessment, it's worth it." Evelyne considered that for a moment.

"I'll definitely mention it," she said.

"Though I'm not sure we're in the same position Credits-wise... My squad hasn't had quite the same Assessment results so far, to be humble—a hundred and fifty per person adds up quickly when you're working with quite a lot less overall..."

"Right… Yeah, that makes sense," Thea said, cringing slightly at her own oversight. She'd forgotten, for a moment, that a hundred and fifty Credits per person wasn't actually a mild inconvenience for most Recruits, like it was for them. It was the kind of number that forced actual choices: Armour or stims. Equipment or consumables. It was a very fair point and nobody pushed it further.

Once they were back inside the arena and the final stretch of the session was underway—Karania, Desmond, and Lucas absorbed in one last round of drills—Thea slipped away from the main group and caught Evelyne's eye, nodding her toward a quieter corner of the arena. Evelyne's expression tightened the moment Thea approached. Something behind her eyes went carefully neutral in that particular way Thea had started to recognise over the last few hours of careful observation.

"Payment," Thea said easily.

"For today. That's all." The slight tension went out of Evelyne's shoulders almost immediately.

"Oh," she said.

"Right. Of course. I—I appreciate it..." Thea settled onto one of the wooden benches at the edge of the arena, back against the wall and looked at her.

'Alright then. Time to figure out more about her actual goals.' Whatever questions Evelyne had done all of this for—the sessions, the intel, the careful positioning of herself as useful and indispensable—they were about to come out.

"So," Thea said.

"Let's get started, then. What did you want to ask about, exactly…?"