The airplane rocked from turbulence, and Fletcher’s fingers dug in a little more to his harness as Tara finished checking his parachute system. A red bandana was wrapped around each arm to denote which side he was on.

  “You’re set, Dixon,” she said as she held her arms out for him to double check her setup as well. She too wore red bandanas, alongside everyone else in the platoon.

  Fletcher carefully traced all the lines of the harness wrapped around her torso and legs, ensuring nothing was twisted or out of place as it led back up to the parachute at her back.

  “You’re good, Knox.” He stood back up and took another breath, still unable to convince himself that this wasn’t going to go horribly wrong. Everyone back in Finnack had failed to mention that part of Hotshot training included airborne tactics, meaning that he was expected to jump out of a moving airplane, an idea he still couldn’t quite fathom.

  The room felt electric with excitement and nerves oozing from all the soldiers packed into the airplane’s hold. Sergeant Tomkins waited near the door, watching with careful eyes this set of recruits. They all wore what looked like safety glasses but were actually an advanced headset which would give them key information during the jump such as their velocity and current height.

  The platoon was divided into four groups of ten for this jump sequence, the other three in different planes. It wasn’t enough that they were parachuting down, but the commanders were making this excursion a full test of training meaning once they got to the ground, they would be engaged in full battle simulation.

  The goal for the squad was to “blow-up” a series of defensive bases and then return to home territory without being caught by the enemy who would be using stun weapons which shot out darts that acted like mini tasers when they hit a person. One dart hurt and caused a temporary down, but three or four of them would knock a person out completely.

  The Hotshots were playing completely on their own, going up against all the other training platoons and even some of the regularly stationed soldiers for this simulation. Despite five weeks of training, Fletcher didn’t feel ready for this kind of situation, fake or not.

  The plane rocked again, and Ramos scoffed as Fletcher reached to a wall to steady himself, his knees feeling weak as he considered what came next.

  “Glad we got saddled with the freak-lover and his little girlfriend,” she said to Frederick.

  “Sounds like someone’s jealous,” Tara quipped back. She patted Fletcher’s shoulder. “Honestly though, how did you ever make it in this program if you’re so scared of flying?”

  “Family expectations,” he answered truthfully. He winced as lights turned off and the rear door opened behind Tomkins.

  [Dark Vision: Active]

  The room was still just a series of outlines with traces of grayscale details, but it was better than a lot of the others in the plane could see.

  “Ready up, soldiers,” their sergeant called out, and the recruits fell into a single-file line, Fletcher behind Frederick and in front of Tara.

  “Go, go, go,” Tomkins said, and the line rushed forward.

  Fletcher’s stomach dropped as he leapt from the ramp, diving into the cool night air. He could faintly see the others around him as they all completed their airborne maneuvers to end up at relatively the same place to easily regroup after.

  Wind rushed past, the night sky nearly pitch black even with his [Dark Vision]. It was like he was falling into an endless void, all alone.

  As terrified as he was, his mind still managed to go on autopilot, his body doing everything it should after hours of training in a vertical wind tunnel to ensure he couldn’t forget what he had to do when it came time for a real jump.

  The ground grew closer, and the altitude on his headset was descending quickly. Once it reached the appropriate number, Fletcher yanked the cord, unleashing his parachute.

  A strong force caught his harness, and he clumsily guided himself to a spot near a sparse group of trees. As he landed, he fell to the side with a slight roll, keeping any single part of his body from taking the full impact, and as soon as he was back on his feet, he unhooked his parachute to free himself from the burden.

  After wrapping it up, he turned his attention to the scenery around him. Nothing was amiss, and his radio came alive with chatter from the others on the team as they all reported safe landings. He did the same and then confirmed the direction on his headset before starting towards the meeting place.

  The three planes with the rest of their platoon would be coming in quick succession, dropping the others off at the three far corners of the simulation area. Tomkins had warned that while they were all working towards the same goal, it was still meant to be a competition between the four squads. Fletcher was a little miffed that he was sent with Ramos and Frederick since that gave the impression that he sucked so much he could offset their powerhouse level. Adebayo had been separated from the all-star-trio to be in Squad B.

  When Fletcher arrived to the ruins which the squad had decided to be their regrouping spot, he found that he was among the first of the team to make it there, alongside Ramos and Souza, a man who was very clearly [Undine] with a mixture of turquoise scales and brown skin covering his body.

  “I’ll take watch,” Souza offered.

  “I can. I have the vision for it,” Fletcher reminded the others. He hefted his taser-rifle behind his back and quickly scaled the ruined stone wall to give himself a good position to watch what constituted enemy territory for this exercise.

  His [Dark Vision] wasn’t great, but it was better than nothing, and he was careful in scanning the horizon in case the enemy was making an early move against them. They were still technically in Mythia, on the Telra continent, but no Unhumans lived in this area anymore due to the sudden climate shift which happened when this part of their world got pulled into Earth. From his understanding, most of the world kept the climate as before, but a few odd places in Mythia and Earth reacted poorly to the Merger, turning some of the most lush places uninhabitable in the blink of an eye.

  The ruins they were in now offered little hint as to what this place was like before the Merger, and while Fletcher’s curiosity wondered about those great mysteries of life, he kept the majority of his focus on the job at hand.

  There was no movement out in enemy territory as the rest of the squad trickled in—except for Tara.

  “Alright. Move out everyone,” Ramos ordered once they’d gone back over their plans for taking out the defensive station.

  “We don’t have everyone,” Fletcher said. “We’re still waiting on Knox.”

  “She’s not responding on the radio which means she probably got taken out already.”

  Frederick snickered. “Or maybe she fell into a ditch that she can’t get out of.”

  The others joined his laughter as Fletcher kept his face hard. “We don’t leave people behind.”

  “Fine.” Ramos smiled maliciously. “You go find your little girlfriend, and the rest of us will do what we were sent to do.”

  Fletcher didn’t bother arguing with her or reminding the others all the moral lessons they received during training about working as a team. It was an argument he’d never win given his poor reputation in the platoon.

  “Fine,” he agreed. “I’ll get Knox, and then we’ll rejoin you guys up at the bridge.”

  “Sure, Dixon. See you then.” Frederick nodded his head to the entrance of the ruins and everyone filed out, leaving Fletcher alone to complete his personal assignment. The problem was that their designated jump area was huge, thus giving him a huge search radius, and without radio help, he didn’t even have a general idea of where she might have ended up.

  That’s not true, he told himself suddenly. He pulled his paper map and a little notepad out and drew a dot at the center to represent where the plane was when they jumped. Tara was right behind him, and given the right numbers, he could make a rough estimate of the radius she could have landed in, eliminating some of the further out places in the jump radius.

  Recalling some physics, he put together a simple model of how far Tara could have gone based on his estimate of where the plane was when she jumped. It was still a big radius, but it was smaller, and that was enough for him.

  Fletcher checked his map one last time to confirm his search pattern and then repacked everything into his various pockets before tightening the shoulder strap of his rifle. He exited the ruins and took a breath as he oriented himself.

  Once he was sure of his path, he took off at a quick jog with the faintest hope that he would find his friend sooner rather than later. No doubt Tomkins would be pissed if he learned Fletcher abandoned the squad for this side quest, but he remained confident that it was the right thing to do.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Fletcher checked in on his radio to see if Tara somehow fixed whatever issue kept her from responding before, but Ramos told him off, claiming they needed the channel empty for their own purposes, giving him even less to go on.

  While he had a wide search area, he had decided to start by checking problem spots, places where the geography would have caused issues for the landing such as trees or cliffs. That was still a lot of ground to cover, so Fletcher decided to risk something that he knew was an objectively stupid idea.

  “[Intuition],” he breathed out, thinking very clearly about wanting to locate Tara, his only friend in the entire platoon.

  [Activating: Intuition]

  Follow the sure compass.

  Well, that was a waste, but at least he tried. His [Intuition] seemed about as helpful as a fortune cookie. With his [Skill] failing him, he was left with the old fashioned way of searching which meant trial and error. He selected the first location which was a fissure surrounded by a few decaying trees, the closest problem spot to the ruins they were supposed to meet at.

  Some deity somewhere was looking out for him, because as he approached the crack, he discovered Tara wedged in it, her arms stuck to her chest.

  “Oh my deities, Dixon. You found me,” she said in disbelief when he approached the location. “The wind caught my chute right at the end and blew me in here.”

  Fletcher immediately tugged the rope from his backpack. “I’ll have you out soon. If we hurry, we can still meet up with the squad before they launch their assault.”

  It took some effort to find a tree that was sturdy enough to act as a pulley, but once he found one, he got the rope set up and returned to Tara where he dropped the free end.

  “Hold on tight,” he advised her. He returned to the other end of the rope and began to pull. It took a few tries for her to get the right grip, but eventually they found a way for her to grasp the rope as he pulled. At first, only her arms went free, but that gave her the ability to tie the rope around herself so he could pull the rest of her out.

  It took around fifteen minutes to get Tara out of the crack she’d fallen in, and she came up with several bruises and scrapes, but all in all, she was no worse for wear.

  Fletcher finished wrapping the bandage around a particularly bad scrape along her head and helped her to her feet.

  “Thank you. I still can’t believe you stumbled upon me,” she said.

  He smiled and returned his backpack to his back. “No problem. I wasn’t willing to leave you behind. It was honestly just a lucky guess.” With a sigh, he looked across the horizon and then down at his watch. It was a cheap thing he bought for training since he wasn’t going to risk the heirloom from his dad out in the wild like this. “We should see about catching up to the others. Tomkins will have our heads if we bail out of the exercise now.”

  Tara nodded, adjusting the hold on her gun. “Sure thing.” She squinted. “I, uh, don’t have [Dark Vision] so maybe you should take the lead.”

  Fletcher laughed and did as she suggested. They half-jogged to where Fletcher hoped the rest of the squad waited, through the dirt, rocks, and dead bushes. The plan called for the team to use a cave as a temporary base and shelter so there was a clear meeting point after the assault. While they weren’t supposed to take their objective until a little later in the night, Ramos and Frederick were so gun happy, he wasn’t sure they would wait for the planned time for their attack.

  They were about a mile out when both their radios exploded with chatter.

  “On my six, on my six,” Souza’s voice shouted.

  “There are some coming from the south. They flanked us,” Frederick’s voice cut in.

  Neither Fletcher or Tara said anything as they both broke into a run, sprinting towards the commotion. When they got within view of the fight, Fletcher shoved her down into a clump of dead bushes alongside him.

  They were too late to be of any help in the battle. Even with his limited vision, he noted the blue bandanas of the soldiers which surrounded the cave. The other eight members of the squad were either unconscious and pulled to the side—several of the taser darts sticking out of them—or kneeling before a row of pointed guns, their own weapons piled up out of reach.

  Tara looked at him with wide eyes. “What do we do, Dixon?”

  “Let’s think on it. Rushing in won’t do any good.” He surveyed the scene again. They didn’t have to worry about the three of their squadmates who were already unconscious since they were now “dead” by the rules of the game, which left the five who were being held prisoner. Based on the waving of the weapons, it might very well turn into an execution if they didn’t hurry.

  “Okay. I’m faster than you so I’ll sneak around to be on the other side and then on my signal, we’ll both fire into the soldiers. I’ll then stand up and draw away as many of them as I can, giving you the chance to take down the others,” he said.

  “Hopefully it’ll be enough of a distraction that Ramos and the others can grab their weapons and help out.” Tara clutched her rifle closer. “That sounds like a plan to me. But let me sneak around. I’m smaller, and that way you can draw them off away from where we need to go after this.”

  “Good point.” Fletched nodded to her as she moved to a crouch and silently left the bushes behind. Each second felt like a minute as he waited for her to get into position.

  “I’m ready,” Tara said through the radio.

  Fletcher took a breath and slunk down to give himself more stability when aiming. “On your signal.”

  “Now.”

  As soon as he heard the word, Fletcher fired his weapon, sending taser-darts into the back of several of the soldiers. Tara’s darts came from the opposite direction, briefly causing confusion as the soldiers tried to figure out who to shoot at.

  Must be recruits like us, Fletcher mused when considering their disorganization. He stood up, firing more darts into the soldiers. Given it typically took between three to five darts to take someone down for good, their chances of their rescue being successful were rather slim with only two of them to fight.

  The newbie soldiers latched onto Fletcher like moths to a light, all them forgetting about the second shooter to instead train their weapons on him.

  Good news for Tara, bad news for him.

  Fletcher sprinted away as darts flew past him. While multiple darts were required to knock someone unconscious, one dart was still an effective taser attack, and it would down him for several seconds if he got hit.

  Once he got a reasonable distance away from Tara and the other squad members, Fletcher dove behind the cover of some rocks and then scrambled to get his rifle up and send some shots off.

  There were still half a dozen enemy soldiers descending on his position, and he didn’t have enough time to take them all down, even if most of them had at least one dart in them.

  He fired again, hitting one of his attackers, but as he went to duck the incoming shots, a dart nabbed him in the shoulder.

  Electricity pulsed through him as he collapsed to the ground. It hurt like nothing else, knocking the air from his lung, but it only lasted a couple of seconds. As soon as he had control of his spasming muscles, he sat back up and held his rifle up, returning fire as the soldiers caught up.

  A second dart caught him in the chest, and he fell back into the dirt, writhing in pain as the taser ran its course. When the pain ended, he found a boot on his chest and several smug faces looking down on him.

  “We’ve got the last one, Grant,” the soldier holding him down said into his radio. “He’s got two darts in him. Should we finish him off?”

  “No. Drill Sergeant said she’ll give a bonus for every live prisoner we bring in,” the voice on the other side said. “Bring him back. We got the other one, and that accounts for all ten, the full squad.”

  Crap. Two of the soldiers pulled Fletcher to his feet and forced his hands behind his back. This was game over, and he could already hear Tomkins’ thrashing when he learned how poorly they performed.

  That’s when Fletcher recalled that the rules of this engagement were different from typical training rules. [Skills] were allowed on the condition that no lasting harm was done, which meant no maiming or killing.

  With only level 1 [Frenzy], he didn’t have to worry about that. This was his last shot at getting his squad free. He walked with the soldiers until they were nearly at the others. Tara had joined those kneeling before the guns, and another unconscious body was with the “dead” soldiers from his squad. The blue team had made a separate pile for their own teammates.

  Tara gave him an apologetic look, but just as they went to force him to kneel with the others, he thought very hard, [Frenzy].

  For someone else that might not have been enough, but that did the job for Fletcher with his [Demanlic] heritage.

  [Activating: Frenzy]

  The lingering pain went away as his body became reinvigorated with new strength and speed. Fletcher immediately broke his hands from the hold and launched into a fist fight with those nearest to him. After all the weeks of training in hand-to-hand combat, he’d learned something, and even if he wasn’t top of the class for Hotshot, he was a whole lot better than these guys.

  A plethora of darts found their targets in his back, arms, and legs as he wrestled with the others, but his [Frenzy] was enough to keep the pain at bay and allow him to maintain control of his body.

  He blocked an incoming punch and threw his knee into the man’s chest, dropping him to the dirt. Fletcher then turned to the next challenger—or rather challengers—a woman and a man. The man swung at Fletcher, but Fletcher ducked and took the man’s feet from him. The woman got her elbow into Fletcher’s back, and he growled as he spun away.

  She went in for another strike, and Fletcher caught her arm and threw her onto her back next to the others.

  The fight provided the necessary distraction, allowing Tara, Ramos, and the others to join in, and a few minutes later, all the other soldiers were knocked out or surrendered.

  Ramos picked up her rifle and shot multiple darts into all the enemies that hadn’t been taken out yet.

  “We don’t need prisoners,” was her only explanation.

  With the fight over and the adrenaline dying down, Fletcher was aware of the extra pain in his body, bits of it making its way to the forefront of his mind even with [Frenzy] active.

  “Deities, Dixon. You’re an animal.” Tara held out a rifle.

  As he went to take it, an unfortunate notification appeared in the corner of his vision.

  [Deactivating: Frenzy]

  He gasped as the pain from before consumed his mind, and a new weakness settled into his limbs.

  “Dixon, are you alright?” someone asked.

  Blackness clouded Fletcher’s vision, and his unconscious body hit the dirt in the next second.

  ***

  “Dixon. Come on, buddy. Wake up already.”

  Fletcher winced as he came to in a very achy body. He’d already lost the habit of checking for light, and he blinked his eyes open to find himself staring up at Frederick’s smirking face.

  “Ugh. What happened?” Fletcher asked, sitting up on the cot. He was in a small tent full of empty, used cots. The other nine members of his squad surrounded him, all of them in dirty, roughed up uniforms.

  “We won,” Ramos announced with a smile. “We were the only squad to complete our objective.”

  “If this is what winning feels like, I don’t wanna know what the losers went through.” Fletcher rubbed his temples in a vain attempt to ease the pounding in his skull.

  Everyone laughed, and Ramos patted his shoulder.

  “Ten darts will do that to you. Though I gotta say, I owe you one, Dixon. You and Knox are the only reason we came out of that thing in one piece. Good job,” she said.

  “Mainly Dixon,” Tara added on to more laughter.

  “If you’re done gloating, I need to speak with Dixon alone,” a new voice said.

  Everyone jumped to attention as they noticed Sergeant Tomkins in the room.

  “At ease. Get your butts out of here,” he said.

  Everyone gave Fletcher a handshake or a shoulder pat as they passed by to exit until he was left alone with the drill sergeant.

  “I didn’t think I’d ever say this to you of all people, but job well done last night, recruit,” Tomkins said.

  “Thank you, drill sergeant,” Fletcher said hesitantly.

  “Rest up. Now that I know what you’re capable of, things won’t be as easy anymore.”

  The man smiled, and Fletcher returned it. Maybe he was finally through the worst of the training.