Citadel (Book 1): Training in Necessity (41 page)

Jason watched as Jenny spoke.  Many of his classmates nodded or spoke very quietly in response to her request.

"Me and Jason, well… this fight's kind of personal.  I know you all want to watch, but... please don't.  For me?  If you want to stay and show your support or something, that's cool and I really appreciate it.  Could you just... turn your backs or something?  Please?"

It took Jason a moment to understand what she intended.  Once he had, he approached Hector while Jenny spoke to the Healer.  His other friend had helped him a great deal, providing information on their classmates' abilities, mindsets and commonly used tactics.  He had also developed many of the battle plans that Jason had employed to defeat those who would otherwise have been likely to negate Jason's power.  He had not been able to come up with anything to give Jason an edge over Jenny.

This was why the duplicator was so surprised when Jason requested such an innocuous item.  Hector couldn't even remember why he'd brought it.

As Jason approached his entrance, he saw the Healer turn his back on their combat dome as well.  Once the doors closed, he raised the item.  It was a common cigarette lighter.  He used it to produce a small flame.  It required a great deal of care to avoid shattering the device in his hand.  Once it was lit, he held his hand in the heat for several minutes.

After he let the flame die, he showed Jenny his hand.  The palm had a small blister.

Jenny wanted this fight to be personal.  She had done her best to insure that her power would not interfere.  Now, Jason had done the same.  If such a simple thing could make Jenny happy, then Jason would do it for her.  After all, she was Awesome.

"Your final exercise begins today." Coach Achala said.

Kelly could practically hear the capitals.  She was used to her instructor's ways by now, or so she'd thought, and didn't like the impression she was getting.

"The premise is much like your simulation exercises."

The class had met first thing in the morning at the Sparring Field.  Rather than rows of combat domes, there was a single enormous one.  Kelly wasn't certain but she thought it was at least a mile high and much, much wider.  Well, not really a perfect dome then, but still...

"This will be your city.  For the next three days, you will be its Citadel.  Your duty is to protect it.  Please make every effort to treat this exercise as if it were real."

Coach Achala hadn't smiled during his short speech.  Rather than serene, he seemed controlled.  The difference wasn't huge but it seemed really important to Kelly.  Her classmates were moving as a group, slowly entering the dome.  As she joined them, she couldn't help but wonder.  Making a bunch of kids strip naked and beat the hell out of each other had been enough to give Coach Achala's ever present aura of peace a mildly sad undertone.  What did it take to remove that peace altogether?

Under the Dome

The first day was kind of fun.

It might have been their first cooperative exercise on such a large scale, but the trainees had enough experience at this point to know how they should start out.  Scouts were sent to explore their new environment while the rest of them concentrated on the immediate area.

No one felt like arguing when Jenny described the dome's interior as 'Awesome.'  At the center, there was a four story replica of the Tower.  South of it, the same area that the trainees had entered from, there was a mock-up of a suburban neighborhood.  None of the houses had more than a single story.  To the mini-Tower's west, there was a commercial center filled with buildings that were clearly meant to be stores and shops.  Most of them were only one story but a few had a second.

To the north and east there was scrubland and a heavy metro area.  The scrub was mostly sand and loose dirt with a few scattered patches of grass and the occasional small hill or bush to break up the monotony.  The metro area was... odd.  It was filled with skyscrapers and office buildings that were only two, sometimes three, stories tall.

It was the level of detail that was the most impressive.  The trainees were used to simulated environments that were clearly... well, simulated.  Usually, they were primarily made of stone with a few scattered plants.  Windows and doors would be absent and any bystanders would be played by Hector.  He'd probably show up in that role before too long, since he wasn't among the trainees and no one thought he'd  been held back for 'further development' like Duncan.

This simulation was almost perfect.  The suburban residences had neatly trimmed lawns with an average of one tree each and a car in every driveway or parked at the curb.  A few houses even had bikes or children's toys on their porches.  The other regions were every bit as complete.

The incredible level of detail in their surroundings meant that the trainees found the lack of civilians a little unsettling.  The exercise environment felt like a ghost town.  Maybe that was why they didn't have much of a discussion before the group headed for the central tower?  It could also have been that it was tall enough to provide a useful view and, even without its resemblance to the Citadel Hub's famous Tower, it was the obvious focal point of the exercise area.

Of course, even more importantly, Anna Insight reported that there was a group of five people inside, each wearing the traditional Healer greys and facemasks.

"Hi.  Rick- I mean, I'm Rick Regrowth."

Kelly couldn't hold back a grin as she looked up at the nervous young healer.  He had sandy blond hair, green eyes that weren't quite the same shade as each other and a little scar under his left lip.  She didn't know why but, for some reason, the little imperfections stood out on him.  Well, that and the fact that she didn't have to look up very far, that was pretty rare with guys.

"Kelly.  Nice to meet you." she said, as friendly as she could.  This guy seemed to be the spokesman for the group of healer trainees they'd met and he'd been going around, introducing himself to the operative trainees for a while now.  She reached out to shake his hand and the guy's eyes went wide as a soon as he touched her.

"What the-" he said.

Kelly pulled the hand back, confused.

"Sorry, sorry, I..."  Rick stammered.  "It's my power.  I, uh, I kinda have this sense?  When I touch someone I can see inside them and... you're sort of weird."

"Am I?" Kelly almost growled.  She wasn't going to change to her combat form just to slap the guy but even her walking around bodies were pretty heavily modified.  She'd have to be careful not to- Oh.  "You mean my Empowerment."

Rick swallowed, visibly nervous.  "Um... yeah?  What else would I...?"

Kelly sighed.  "Sorry, everyone here's been pretty cool but, really, I just have some leftover issues.  Not your problem though.  Like I said, sorry."  She could tell he was still curious, maybe too nervous to ask, and she felt bad about almost taking off his head, so...

"I'm a shapeshifter, popped when I was really young.  Shifting's pretty much instinctive for me, or at least it was back then.  I didn't really think about it, just did it, y'know?"

The healer nodded.

"Well, that led to some bad habits.  For one thing, I tended to start looking like anyone I liked.  Not like-like, just anyone I thought was cool or whatever.  That... didn't always go over so well."

"They thought... what?  You were pretending to be them?" he asked.

"Yeah, or their friends or their favorite celebrity or... you get the idea.  Between that and the fact that I didn't really get the idea of genders... Like I said, it didn't go so well.  A lot of people gave me a hard time.  My cousin was pretty much my only friend.  He stuck up for me and we played in his backyard, that sort of thing.  Eventually, I realized I could do more than just human forms and then I started looking into the Citadel.  I wanted to do something important, make all that crap I went through mean something."

"More than human forms is right." Rick said.  "Don't, uh, don't take this the wrong way?  But, like I said, your body is
really
weird."

This time, Kelly decided to take it as a compliment.  "Oh, well, that all started when my friend Hector gave me a really cool idea.  See, I got a little too enthusiastic and, through a totally understandable mistake, my head... kinda... exploded."

Kelly spent quite some time talking to the young healer after that.  It was nice.  Not romantic in any way since she still hadn't started puberty, but it was enough to make her think the process might be worth all the nasty side effects.  She was just wondering whether she'd end up liking girls or boys, or maybe both, when they were interrupted by a flash of red light.

"What the heck was that?" asked Gerard Healer, staring at the red glow that was clinging to everyone on the roof.

"I'm pretty sure it was the signal that things are about to get started for real." Drew said.

"Huh?"

Kerry sighed, not bothering to hide the irritation.  "Retcon.  That was Retcon's power.  It means that whatever they're about to throw at us, the instructors won't be holding back."

"Retcon?  But... but isn't she attached to Prime?  Why would she be part of a graduation exercise?"

Drew carried on the conversation with Gerard but Kerry was too distracted to pay any attention.  There was movement down on the street.  Actually, it was on all of the streets.

"I'm going to go see what's happening down there." Kerry told the other two.

Keridwyn closed her eyes.  When she opened them, she wasn't a twenty year old woman that looked like a little girl anymore.  She was something else, something great, something strong.

She leapt off the tower's roof, careful not to damage it with her claws.  Wings spread wide, flapping every now and then to adjust her course, Kerry stretched her serpentine neck so she could get a good look at the ground below.  Apparently, their fake city was now filled with fake citizens.

At first, Kerry thought they were all being produced by a single Empowered.  She changed her mind when she got a closer look.  There were people sitting in cars and at the tables of cafes.  They looked real, except for being slightly transparent.  Even more were- not walking, maybe sort of gliding?- down the sidewalks.  Those were just an inch thick, stone silhouettes of men and women.  They reminded Kerry of those signs on a restroom door, only life-sized.

The ones that were most important right now were a bunch of wire frame mannequin style ones, sort of like overly elaborate metal stick figures.  They were gathered around what she thought was supposed to be a two story apartment building.  She was also pretty sure it was on fire, based on all the smoke and flames coming out of its windows.

Kerry made sure to land a few blocks away and approach on foot.  As fast as she'd been moving and as much wind as she made landing, the fire would've gotten a lot worse if she'd come down too close to it.  Careful not to step on any of the 'civilians' as she got closer, Kerry took a moment to consider the problem.

The fire itself was no threat to her, not in this form.  But she was too big, way too big, to enter the building and search for trapped victims.  If she made a hole in the wall to reach through, that'd just let in more air and, again, that would just make the fire worse.  She couldn't call for someone better suited to this.  Her power seemed to literally make a new, and different, body every time she used it.  There was no way to get a custom headset or communicator for it.

Kerry was considering the possibility of just dismissing her dragon body.  That would put her back at the tower, maybe next to Drew, and he could spread the word or come help himself.  That idea was cut off by the arrival of the super hero.  He had a bright red cape, boots and facemask, with a tight fitting yellow body suit.  The guy was hovering just above and between Kerry and the burning building.

She didn't know why she hadn't seen him arrive, teleportation, speed or just angle of approach.  Kerry didn't know why someone would put a big blue 'T' on their own chest or pose with their hands on their hips in mid-air like something out of a cartoon or a kid's comic either.

Then she heard him announce, "Never fear, the incredible Todd is here!" and saw him dart forward through the air.  He started ripping out chunks of the wall, presumably to help any trapped residents escape.

"STOP THAT YOU IDIOT!" Kerry yelled, lunging forward at the same time that the extra oxygen caused flame to billow out of the new opening.

There wasn't any real sunlight in what some of the trainees had begun to call Fake City.  Even so, the class and their attached Healers gave a sigh of relief when the sourceless light started to dim.  Kerry's fire had turned into a fiasco and it was far from unique.  No real combat, it was just one stupid incident after another and each one of them had involved at least one flesh and blood person who was obviously Empowered.

Now that it was night time, everyone was hoping to get some rest.  Still, a little over three months at the Citadel was enough to give them a good idea of how it worked.  No one was really surprised when they didn't get that rest.

"I... um, I think they're dead." Anna Insight announced.

"Who?" Kelly asked.

The two were currently the only uninjured operative trainees in the tower.  It was the middle of the night and everyone else was either out dealing with the ‘Battlegrounds invasion' or recovering from injuries taken doing the same thing.