“Okay, I am still a little confused. This is a group challenge, right? Teamwork?” I asked, trying to parse the byzantine rules of academy ladder politics.

  “Group combat ladder, yes,” Akyo explained. She was our resident expert on all things ranked, having studied the system in depth before ever leaving Tokyo. “Technically, we are being challenged to establish someone’s dominance among the lowest ranks. Right now, because none of us have challenged, all five first-year teams are considered part of the twenty-fifth rung, even though, school-wide, there are twenty-five teams. A victory will move us to rung twenty-four, while the loser stays at twenty-five.”

  “And you said that it could affect other rankings too?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Most of the other categories don’t start to get filled until after grading, but with your tech getting used in ranked matches, you personally could advance in support crafting and gearing. Our teammates could also gain ranks in technical competence. The only thing is the side bet.”

  I glanced at Candace. “Yeah, that’s the part that weirds me out. I mean, is it legal?”

  She nodded. “In the school, gear bets based on performance are totally legitimate. It’s how the rich kids get better gear without having to make it themselves.”

  “Okay, I get that. I mean… I don’t actually understand the bet. You are saying that the Phoenix team wants our armor. I totally get that, but the details are weird. They are willing to pay up to a hundred grand for each suit if they win, but they were offering to pay if they lose, too.”

  She shrugged. “If they win, you personally outfit each of them with their own custom-fitted suit at your earliest convenience. If they lose, they have to wait until you release the suits to the general market, if you ever do.”

  I nodded slowly. “So what do we win?”

  Candace sighed. “A forfeit. They tried to offer a few things to counter the bet, but they don’t have a tinker on their team. They have nothing we want.”

  I nodded. “Do we have to accept it? The side bet?”

  “The side bet? No. Technically, since the team is first-year even though I am second, we can’t really lose anything by bailing or forfeiting the match itself, except for a big bonus for competing as a first-year team. But turning down the bet makes us look weak.”

  I glanced at Mindy. “What do you think?”

  Mindy smiled, a predator’s gleam in her eye. “I’m going to accept the duel. The side bet was totally for you, though. I mean, they are second years. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain. I think the side-bet is the only reason they offered, though. They want your tech.”

  I nodded. Mindy was the team leader, and her word was law. I didn’t think we were quite ready for prime time yet, but we weren’t terrible, after almost a month and a half of not-dying in classes. This would probably be a good shake-down cruise before the mid-term trials, which I assumed would involve actual Kaiju or something equally horrifying.

  “I am not sure yet. I mean, the armors are decent for now, but I am not happy with the helmets. They’re like massively pre-alpha tech demos. Will they accept raw versions?”

  Candace snickered. “Considering the suggestions Frost Phoenix was making about paying off her forfeit, I am betting she’d accept anything raw you wanted to give her.”

  I flushed. I threw myself into classes to avoid thinking about it, but it was getting harder to ignore the flirting from my team. It wasn’t terribly blatant, but I was starting to wonder if they’d turned it into a sport, even knowing my sworn oath to avoid Alpha girls. The fact that my dedication to this oath also precluded any contact with normal girls didn’t help. I was enthusiastically participating in my own conversion to a full-time, hermitic gadgeteer.

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

  “Do they know our line-up?” I asked, trying to steer the conversation back to life-or-death matters and away from my love life, or distinct lack thereof.

  Candace nodded. “At least what is publicly available. But there’s a slight problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  She smirked. “You haven’t gotten your active powers registered. Right now, you are considered an enigma. Duels are strictly controlled to avoid serious injury. Your air shield is verified, as is your healing, rapid movement, and materials merging. But from what I understand, you’re getting a lot of side-eye because your active ability seems to include too many disparate effects. If you intend to use your… uhh… special armor plug-ins, like fireballs or lightning, you’re going to have to get those tested and classified.”

  I facepalmed. “I thought ‘momentum control’ covered it. It’s a very broad, forgiving term.”

  Mindy shook her head. “Not for a Class Three, it doesn’t. For a Class Six, you could pretty much do anything and no one would bat an eye, but you want to keep a low profile… a profile that seems to be rocketing away from you faster than you can chase it.”

  I sighed. “Okay, my lovely sponsor, what do YOU recommend I do?”

  Mindy looked a bit flushed. “You are already attracting attention. My personal suggestion is to go ahead and reclassify as a Class Four with a single, broader power that could cover all of your displayed abilities.”

  “As a Class Four? I’m not sure what would cover it.”

  She smiled a little evilly. “Would you like to hear the rumors about what your real power is?”

  I nodded. “Actually, yes. I need a good laugh.”

  Mindy glanced at Candace, who grinned, and I immediately knew I wouldn’t like where this was going.

  “The first guess is that you are an Artificer.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s like a cross between an enchanter—who’d normally be shipped off to a different academy—and a widgeteer. Basically, you make magical toys. The problem is, that sort of versatility might get you too much notice from the magical school recruiters. You’d never get a moment’s peace.”

  I nodded. “I already got a personal invitation from those creeps, so yeah. Not great. It would also almost automatically demand a power rank update to at least a Five.”

  She nodded. “The second rumor is that you have low-level temporal manipulation. Not time travel, but the ability to speed up or slow down localized things. That would explain your rapid movement, your accelerated healing, and technically even your walls—slowing air molecules to a crawl. And being a genius who can ‘slow down time’ to think would explain the complex equipment you make.”

  I nodded. “That’s a possibility. It’s broad but plausible. It might not even require me claiming a higher power level.”

  Her smile widened. “The third rumor is that you are some kind of Power Vampire.”

  I looked at her in confusion, taking a sip of my disgustingly caloric power drink. We were all hanging out in the common room while the gentle, ironic strains of Marilyn Manson’s unplugged album quietly played in the background. “What does that mean?”

  “It means you temporarily rob or borrow powers from others. That would explain your power versatility perfectly, but would open up a huge number of questions, like ‘who are you draining?’ and ‘can we please dissect you?’”

  I nodded. “Let’s put that one on the back burner. As a rumor, it’s great for keeping people cautious. But I have no desire for the instructors to think I’m a parasitic leech. Next.”

  Candace snorted. “That leads to the fourth rumor.”

  Mindy sighed, as if burdened by the stupidity of the world. “The fourth rumor, and the one that’s currently most popular, as far as I can tell, is that you are a Harem Lord.”

  I choked on my drink. “A what?”

  Akyo snickered, clapping her hands together. “I know this one! They think that you gain power from every girl you have sexual relations with. And based on Candace’s recent rank gains, you also give them a power boost in return. It’s a symbiotic, scandalous feedback loop!”

  I shook my head, utterly mortified. “Number one, I haven’t slept with Candace! And number two, her power gains were just because she had the right tool for the job! It’s called equipment!”

  Candace smirked, not helping in the slightest. “I mean, we don’t KNOW that you aren’t a harem lord. The only way to be sure is through rigorous, repeated testing. For science.”

  I gave her the stink-eye, and she retreated with her hands up, grinning. “If I didn’t at least try to test the theory, you’d think I was sick!”

  “I think I will try to run with the time control angle,” I said, desperate to change the subject. “It fits my power pretty closely and it won’t require me to re-list as a higher class. That just means there are certain things I will have to avoid doing publicly.”

  Candace nodded. “Mostly, the powers won’t get you into trouble unless they think you can actually alter the time stream or do some horrible things like aging someone by a thousand years.”