I finger the new amulet around my neck as I ride, alone save for Celeste, in the elevator up to the hub. The amulet is actually more like a pendent, just with more length; it’s covered in heavy inscriptions, even along the thin chain that circles my throat. Despite its small size, though, it seems to work great — at least in the testing I did with Dad after my conversation with Althia.

  The pendant arrived while I was still in my meeting with the massive, serpentine centurion. Apparently, it arrived like a normal package, just delivered by someone who didn’t seem at all connected to the postal services — at least, according to Dad.

  Still, the pendant seems to function perfectly, allowing me and my father to see through my mist as if it were only a very slight haze. It will be absolutely perfect to cloak my team and me as we pass through a hostile area. We will be able to shoot our attacks out of the mist accurately, and anyone trying to shoot into the mist won’t be able to see what they’re aiming at. Definitely worth the amount I spent on it — although the idea of burning through that much Yen in such a short amount of time still makes me want to gag.

  Even as I study the new pendent, thoughts of my talk with Althia and the plans I’ve made whirl in my mind. Finally, I’ve managed to lock in on a plan that genuinely feels like it might save my home. The first step of said plan, however, involves me catching the attention of someone even Kayne seems terrified of. What could possibly go wrong?!

  The more I think about it, the more I doubt Nightsong would come to Shinara for an E Rank sentinel. No matter how much noise I make about the lawsuit, I doubt Nightsong would come for just me. As such, I’ll need to rope my mentor into this — Audrey seems like she'd be way more willing to do something sketchy for the cause than Kayne. Besides, I don’t need her to actually do anything wrong; I just need it to look like she did something wrong — hopefully, something it will take Nightsong a month to investigate. Maybe Audrey will have some ideas when I meet with her next.

  Thinking of which, I really haven’t seen or heard anything from Audrey since Saturday. Her email and General Novak’s words make me think that she’s supposed to be involved in our training, but Kayne seems to be taking on that burden entirely on his own. It makes me wonder what’s become of my absentee mentor. Hopefully, she’s okay.

  Either way, I still have around a month before I want Nightsong to arrive. So, I have time to come up with something more substantial before then — hopefully, something that will attract her to the city without getting Audrey into too much trouble.

  The elevator dings open, revealing the majesty of the hub and breaking me from my introspection. By the path towards the central U, Akari waits on a stone bench while scrolling on her phone. She glances up at my arrival, nodding at me as she stands to join me.

  “Find where we’re supposed to be going?” I ask. Akari left home before me to scout out the training hall we’re supposed to be at today — I was too busy dragging myself out of bed to go myself. Stressing about the plan Althia went over and humanity’s potential fate at the end of this year isn’t much better than stressing about the doom of my home city, but hey, at least I’ve made some progress.

  Absently, I wonder if I were working at a burger restaurant right now instead of the GDF, I’d be worrying about my manager just as much as I worry about the end of the world. I suppose that’s how the world works, though. For anxious people like me, getting yelled at by my manager could feel like the end of the world.

  I blink, realizing Akari replied to my question. I’ve gotten lost in the clouds again… haven’t I? I look up at the now taller girl with confusion; Akari just rolls her eyes and gently takes me by the arm to start leading me down the path in the right direction.

  Shrugging off Akari’s grip, I move to walk beside her on the path. I look up at her with a soft smile. She seems so much improved lately from the girl I sat with behind the school in the dark. Now, she walks with confidence, and her life force blazes bright. It’s amazing to me just how much she’s progressed in the last few weeks, but I suppose sometimes things just happen that way. Get someone away from the source of their pain, and sometimes, they’ll start to blossom right away. I know well that it doesn’t always work like that.

  Forcing myself to focus, I ask, “Did Kayne say what we’re actually doing today when he called?”

  I know it’s supposed to be something about combined team training, but I’m not quite sure what he means by that, though. From the email, it seems to me that Thursday is some kind of mix between physical training and tactical training.

  “We’re supposed to be doing mock battles with other sentinel teams in our generation,” Akari responds with a shrug. “It’s supposed to teach us what fighting volcora is like before we actually do, but…”

  “We seem to have skipped that step,” I finish for her, nodding my understanding.

  I frown, considering the idea. “Isn’t that a little unfair, though? Our team has more abilities unlocked for us to use; the other teams will just have their dominion art.”

  Akari smiles as if the idea of having an unfair advantage is perfectly acceptable to her. “I’m not sure how it will work,” she says. “I’m sure Prof and the others will find a way to make it fair, though.”

  Eventually, we arrive at a large building up against one side of the hub’s massive circular glass wall. Walking inside immediately gives me the impression of some kind of high school gymnasium mixed with a rock-climbing gym.

  The building is a massive rectangle, all but for the one side that is right up against the glass wall. The balcony outside the glass blocks my view of Shinara below, so instead, it feels like the gym is perched on the edge of a cliff — all I can see outside is a vertigo-inducing expanse of blue sky and fluffy white clouds.

  The interesting part of the gym, however, is the floor. Rather than the flat wood flooring I might have expected from a building like this, this place instead seems to be simulating proper landscape. Primarily made up of sand, dirt, and gravel, the floor has simulated pits and hills like the natural rise and fall of a normal landscape — in other words, a landscape I’ve never seen outside of movies, having never left Shinara other than arriving here as a young girl.

  Scattered among the simulated terrain and rocky outcropping that seem to have been made from actual rock. Or… yeah, they probably just went and got some normal rocks and put them in here, to be honest. For some reason, I expected those fake rocks from a rock-climbing gym, the ones that were softer, so you don’t hurt yourself. I suppose we are training to fight monsters, though, so… yeah, I don’t know where I’m going with this.

  Akari, having taken me by the arm again as I looked over the gym for too long, drags me in the direction of a group of other, now familiar, teenagers.

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  From the looks of things, most of the sentinels in our generation are here, including those from my team who have arrived already — so essentially, just Haruto, as Claire and Baylee are rather hopeless when it comes to arriving on time. Doubtlessly, Baylee will swagger in here just barely on time in the most impractical outfit for training possible, and Claire will just arrive late, looking like she just climbed out of bed.

  I sigh happily, looking over the other sentinel teams. Few of them seem to have all of their members present yet, although I notice with interest that one of those teams is Troy’s.

  Troy’s team is made of four young men — including Troy himself — and one young woman. They laugh and joke with one another, much like my own team likes to behave. However, there is an edge of tension behind their laughter… indeed, it’s present in the eyes of every sentinel here.

  We all know that the city we love is in grave danger, and I suddenly understand Troy’s perspective. How helpless must he feel to have become a sentinel — one of the only ones who could help — and be told that he has to focus on slow, steady training even though the city might not still be here when he finishes.

  I find myself meeting Troy’s eyes as we wait, and I offer him a slight nod of understanding. His frustration makes perfect sense, after all. Maybe if one of our upcoming missions doesn’t seem too dangerous, I’ll ask Kayne if we can bring Troy’s team with us. Maybe they can start progressing, too. The last thing I would want is to still be an E Rank when the volcora try to take the city. It’s only been a week since the incursion zone, and I’m already feeling as if I’m not progressing fast enough — as if it isn’t possible for me to progress fast enough.

  If I had Audrey’s power or Nightsong’s… I could stand between the Volcora and my home, and they would turn away in search of a softer target. I won’t get that kind of power by sitting in a classroom — or even through training like this. Still, the whole, not dying, part is important, so I suppose I better learn.

  Once everyone arrived — Claire having shown up late as expected — and the professor called for us to gather around him. As we move to surround Prof, I notice Kayne towards the entrance of the building, watching our team with dark, intelligent eyes.

  He must be watching to make sure we attended his planned training, I realize. As Kayne notices me watching him, he gives me a sharp nod before turning and striding out of the building. Fair enough; I’m sure he has better things to do than watching us train with the other teams when Prof already has things under control.

  Shrugging, I turn back to Prof, who, even as a non-sentinel, cuts an impressive figure. With his toned body and black GDF uniform, he looks exactly like the stereotypical military officer. However, instead of the hard expression I might have expected, Prof’s eyes seem to reflect a deep kindness. He looks out over the group of teenage sentinels, almost like a father looking over his children — counting heads to ensure no one tried to skip out on the lesson.

  Finally, Prof nods to himself and stands up straighter. “Good morning, sentinels!” he calls out with a smile. “I’m happy to inform you that today we will be going through an exercise that is one of the most effective in teaching you how to handle yourselves in actual battle. Today, we will be doing team battles.”

  This proclamation sends a murmur of excitement rippling through the sentinels, although my team stays mostly silent — we’re the only ones here who have experienced actual battle, after all.

  Prof raises his hand in the air, and in it, I notice a small, inscribed pin like a shield pin. However, this one seems to be made into a simple circle rather than a shield shape. “This,” Prof continues, “is a limiter. When in your assault state, this will make your shield flash bright red when it has taken 10% of the damage required to break it. You will all wear these pins for the fight and when someone’s shield starts flashing red, they are considered dead for our exercise.”

  Pausing for a moment, Prof glares out at the sentinels arrayed around him. “If someone you’re fighting’s shield starts flashing red, you are to cease aggressive action towards that person immediately. Failure to do so will result in disciplinary action. We will not have any injuries today.”

  “Now, I’m aware that some of you have weapons that are too powerful to be safely used in this exercise,” he says, looking straight at my team and me. “Due to this, you will all be using training weapons inscribed to deal only a set amount of damage to an assault state shield. For ability use, if you have an ability that you are concerned could break an assault state shield in one hit, you will be restricted from using it in this exercise.”

  “Questions?” Prof asks.

  About a dozen hands go up immediately. I sigh; this might take a while.

  As it turns out, almost all of the fancy sentinels with their fancy attack powers have something too dangerous to use. Akari was even been expressly forbidden from using her dominion art in any capacity whatsoever in any training exercise against another person — Prof was quite adamant about that point.

  To say that my team has been nerfed is a bit of an understatement, especially because we are the only ones with powers beyond our dominion arts. Although some of the dominion arts of the others are horrifyingly powerful.

  For example, the female sentinel on Troy’s team, Melody, has a dominion art that allows her to enhance the senses of others… and she uses it offensively. It’s a bit hard to focus on a fight when, all of a sudden, you can hear, smell, and taste everything around you for miles! Oh, she can use it to help her teammates, too, but it’s like her power was designed to be overwhelming on the senses. I am very much not looking forward to fighting Troy’s team.

  Not too long later, I stand with my teammates on the sandy field in my assault state. I smile softly at the poor team who were chosen to face us for the first match. It isn’t Troy’s team, but instead, it's one comprised of sentinels I don’t know. Who knows… maybe they’ll be able to put up a fight.

  Prof and the others stand up high on an elevated platform overlooking the entire battlefield. Sadly, they won’t be getting much of a show for this fight. With my mist, and my new amulet, Team Picnic is going to be an absolute headache to fight.

  “Team Voyager, ready?!” Prof calls from the balcony.

  “Ready!” A green sentinel from the other side of the room responds with excitement.

  “Team Picnic, ready?” Prof asks us.

  Baylee gives a soft smile and glances side to side to the rest of us, “Remember the plan; let’s make this quick.”

  Looking up to Prof, she responds, “Ready!”

  Prof nods, “Begin!”

  I throw my hands to the side, and in an instant, a billowing cloud of blue-white fog envelops the arena. The fog is so thick that it’s hard to see your hand in front of your face… or it would have been. My teammates and I can see perfectly. Sharing triumphant smiles, we go to work.

  The next couple of teams to face Team Picnic are significantly less excited than the first was. Obscuring their vision makes for an incredible advantage for our team. Even when the enemies try to stick together, they can hardly do anything to stop Baylee and me from raining ranged attacks down on them through the fog. While it was called cheating several times by the others, Prof allowed it — apparently, there are several volcora who either obscure your vision or you can't look at when you fight. That’s a lesson I learned well, having faced the gazer in the incursion zone.

  While our team is seen as having an unfair advantage, no one seems to be frustrated at us but rather at their own lack of real experience. If they had more abilities, maybe they could put up a better fight. Instead, they seem to be growing more and more annoyed with Prof and the GDF. Seeing us with such an advantage over them with only one incursion under our belt, they can’t help but wonder what one would do for them and their teams.

  Logically, I know the GDF is right to put them through this training before just throwing them at an incursion zone like they did us. However, I see their side of the coin as well. Proper training would take too long, and the GDF has already set a precedent by having us go into our first incursion zone with hardly a day of training.

  From the look on Prof’s face, I can tell he feels their frustration as well. I wonder what he’s planning to do about it. If we go into another incursion zone tomorrow and come back even stronger, we soon won’t even be able to spar against our fellow sentinels in the same generation. Already, every fight is heavily skewed in our favor.

  I wonder if that will hold up, though, as the fight against Troy and his team is next.