Before I got very far, hell before I even managed to get out of the arena so I could find a place to change into my costume and come back in, I ran into Dani lingering around that front area, apparently waiting for me. She made it clear that she would help keep Izzy company while I was busy with the tournament, which took a fair bit of the guilt out of my mind. Yeah, the younger girl had said she was fine with staying by herself so our parents would think I was with her, but still. I just felt better knowing that Dani would be with her. Especially now that I knew Dani was Pack.
And how strange was that? I felt better knowing a Fell-Touched was with my very Star-Touched adopted little sister. This really was such a weird life sometimes. Okay, basically all the time.
She had her special backpack that was connected to the lizards’ terrarium, because like hell was she going to leave them behind entirely after what had just happened the night before. Apparently the bag showed normal contents if it was opened one way, or connected to the terrarium with the lizards if opened a different way. So when the guard at the gate checked it, he had only seen first aid supplies, water bottles, and a bunch of old comic books. They’d even had a quick conversation about what the best Batman movie was. His vote, as it turned out, was Tim Burton’s Batman Returns from all the way back in 1992, almost a decade before Touched even existed. Yeah, he was an old guy. He actually thought Marlon Wayans was a great Robin in that movie.
So yeah, clearly Dani had met an utterly ridiculous old man with no taste guarding the gate. I really thought someone should take a look at him and make sure he wasn’t some sort of evil alien infiltrating our planet or something. But in the meantime, after taking a moment to say hi to the lizards so they wouldn’t be offended, I sent Dani off to where Izzy was, then made my way out. I really needed to change and get in there so I could get briefed on what my first game was.
Fortunately, there were no other distractions and I managed to make it back through that secret entrance in the park after dressing up as Paintball. Once again, I was incredibly glad this place was nice and air conditioned, especially the field itself. It was already close to a hundred degrees, and kept getting hotter. If the area hadn’t been temperature controlled, I was pretty sure I would’ve straight up died about six seconds after putting my full-coverage jumpsuit on. Maybe sooner. I was definitely going to need to see what Wren could do about that heat thing soon. Detroit summer might not be as bad as Phoenix summer, but I still didn’t want to go running and flipping my way through the city during the height of it. Maybe she could move the heat away from me. That was totally within the bounds of her speciality, right? Moving a bit of heat should absolutely count.
In any case, this town, particularly the arena for these games, was set up for the heat. So I didn’t need to worry about that. I just went in through the tunnel and met up with that guy I’d met the day before, Devon. He greeted me enthusiastically, then led me through a maze of corridors in the area beneath the arena, talking to me about what to expect while showing me some clips of my competition on his tablet until we reached one of a dozen so-called ‘ready rooms.’ The place was about thirty feet long and twelve feet wide, a sparsely furnished area with little more than a few chairs, an old card table, and some televisions on the wall showing what was happening out on the arena field right then. Besides the entrance we came through, there was a set of double doors at the opposite end, where another man wearing an event staff jumpsuit was standing.
This was where we were supposed to wait until it was time to head out onto the field. Those doors would, once it was our turn, connect to a tunnel leading right onto the grass. For now they would only go to an empty tunnel that went nowhere before ending at a cement wall within a few feet. This was how they kept various groups separate while still allowing quick entry onto the field, by putting them in different rooms like this all around the arena and just changing which room the main exit tunnel was connected to. The doors in each of these ready rooms and the doors of that exit tunnel were linked. Actually, from what I understood, the Ten Towers guy responsible for this whole set-up, Switchshift, was the same one who had done a lot of work for some of the Star-Touched groups back in Detroit to help those guys move around the city faster.
There were three others in the room when we arrived. Which, considering Devon had informed me that my first event would consist of four competitors, meant I was the last one there. All three of them had been in the middle of conversation, though it stopped when we entered, and they all turned to stare at us. Well, at me. They barely glanced at Devon. Their eyes were locked on me. I could feel them staring me down, judging me, comparing what they were seeing in person to what they’d seen in pictures or video. Was I even shorter than they’d thought? I was probably shorter than they’d thought. People tended to think I was taller when they just saw pictures.
What do you mean, I was babbling to myself? I totally didn’t babble to myself, that was just silly.
Devon had already given me a quick rundown of who I would be facing on our way here, so I took a second to look over each of them myself while they were staring at me. Three other Touched, each of them good at movement and acrobatics. That was what this first event was supposed to be a contest of. The four of us were going to compete in some sort of game that would involve needing to move around a lot, dodge things, just a lot of traversal stuff. None of us had been given the details yet. That was supposed to happen right before we went out there so none of us would have the advantage of planning ahead. We would be on an even field. Well, as even as the field could be when we all had very different powers to work with.
The first opponent my eyes landed on was this very tall guy. Like, abnormally (but not supernaturally) tall. He was at least two or three inches over seven feet, and his skintight dark blue bodysuit proved he was also incredibly, unnaturally thin. Really, his arms were as skinny as mine, maybe even more so.
Well, as skinny as mine had been before all this happened. I’d actually been putting on a bit of muscle since I started really training to deal with all this shit. Enough that I was probably going to need to come up with a way to explain it to my parents soon enough. Maybe I could tell them I was working out because I wanted to join a sport like baseball or something? But then I’d probably have to actually try out for that, and God help me if I made it and had to try to balance that and the whole Touched thing. No, I was going to have to come up with something else for it. Add figuring that out to my to-do list. If I put enough things on that list it would collapse under its own weight and send everything on it into the void so I’d never have to deal with them again, right? That had to be how that worked.
Anyway, the tall, skinny guy’s dark blue bodysuit also had gold trim in it, and he was wearing a mask that covered almost his entire head but left his long black hair exposed, with dreadlocks that fell far down, just past the middle of his back. The mask had gold lenses over the eyes.
His name was Split. Apparently he could separate his entire body down to the individual fingers and toes, eyes, everything. He could instantly put each piece of himself, as together or apart as he liked, anywhere within his line of sight and control them all like that. With just a thought, his whole body would break apart and all the pieces could be scattered throughout the entire area. The parts would just float around and act independently. Then he could put the separated pieces together again. He could teleport short distances that way by doing a simple split to transport a piece of himself as far as he could see in whatever direction he wanted to go, then send the rest of himself to join up with it. He couldn’t just teleport without separating a piece first. And yes, apparently he often fought by sending those dreadlocks of his to start smacking people around.
I’d also asked if he could beat people up with his internal organs or stab them with jagged pieces of his bones, but apparently each… uh, layer of the body part had to stay together. A finger had to have the skin, nerves, bone, blood, everything. It was all kept contained within that part so the blood didn’t go spraying out or anything, but he couldn’t split the finger itself in half and use the exposed bone to cut people. And speaking of the nerves, he was very resistant to damage no matter how together or apart he was, as he had almost no ability to feel pain and his body was very elastic or rubbery. Not full pink paint elastic, but enough to bend any part in any direction. Between all that and what was a strong regeneration ability, he was pretty hard to hurt.
The girl next to Split was much shorter, standing only about four inches taller than me. She kind of looked like a Power Ranger or one of those Sentai heroes, with a bright purple form-fitting suit with black and gold wavy lines spread through it, and a matching helmet (purple with a gold visor) sort of like my own. This was Tumbleweed, the girl that Bodyshop guy had told me he was here with, from Atlanta. I’d remembered what he’d said about her powers, and seeing clips of it on the way up here had been even more impressive. She could become almost weightless, and dramatically bounce or ricochet off things while propelling herself in any direction. After ricocheting, she could hit something, or someone, with greater force than her size, strength, and speed should have made possible. The more times she bounced before choosing to discharge it into an attack, the more magnified the resulting damage was. All while she took no damage from it at all. There was no equal and opposite reaction where she was concerned in any way. She bounced harder and further than she should have been able to, when she actually unleashed the damage she charged up with those bounces it was with greater force than her size and speed should have created, and she didn’t experience any backlash from imparting the damage. Newton was probably curled up in a corner somewhere. Then again, he probably wasn’t fond of me either.
Finally, the last member of our little group was a teen boy who seemed to be about my age. My real age, not the one everyone thought Paintball was. His entire body seemed to be made out of highly polished, very smooth emerald, like a living gem statue. Even his short, spiky hair consisted of small, sharp strands of very thin gemstone that was slightly darker than the rest of his body. He was only wearing shorts, and he was pretty… muscular. He looked like a very fancy statue of an Olympic athlete. One who was rather proud of his body, with good reason.
This was Liqueguy, like liquefy but with guy. And yes he was apparently very proud of that name. In addition to having fairly enhanced strength (enough to lift a couple thousand pounds), he could transition between solid and liquid forms. In his solid form he could create solid walls made of the same material as his own body, which was durable enough to stand up to sustained rifle fire. In his liquid form, he could subsequently transform those walls into liquid as well and maneuver them around. Or just summon them in liquid form. Whichever state he was in was the state the material he summoned would be in. One thing he did a lot was ride a constantly moving ‘wave’ of his material. Whether he was solid or liquid, he could still stand on the wave and ride around on it.
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So those were my opponents for this first game, whatever it actually ended up being. After taking a second to look at them, while they did the same to me, I extended a hand. “Uh, hey, guys. This oughta be fun, huh?” I was really hoping none of them were the type to be upset about having what they thought was a little kid, barely a teenager, join the tournament. Yeah, that Liqueguy, uhh… guy was the same age I actually was, but as far as the general public was concerned, Paintball was like twelve or thirteen. I could see some people having opinions on that. Let alone the fact that I’d been put into the tournament at the last minute, as a replacement.
Split was the first one to accept my offered handshake, and he did so without moving from where he was standing. His arm just vanished from the rest of his body, reappeared in front of me, and grabbed my hand to shake it while the man himself gave a loud, booming laugh that seemed incongruent with how skinny he was. “Oh yes, a pleasure to meet you, little Paintcan!” His booming voice also had a bit of a Russian or just eastern European accent to it. “So glad to have you as a part of our first run! From all that we have heard, you make things very interesting!”
I’d jumped just a bit when the arm appeared in front of me, which was probably his intent. I didn’t think he was trying to be a jerk or anything, but my first impression in those couple seconds was that he did enjoy startling people. And who could blame him? If I had that power, I’d probably-- wait I kinda already did use my little melting into a puddle power to startle people, huh? Okay, yeah, I definitely didn’t have any room to judge. So, I just enthusiastically shook the man’s floating hand and painted a quick smiley face across my visor. “At least I don’t have a rep for being boring!” I gave an exaggerated shudder. “Now that sounds like a fate worse than death.”
“Oh, you’re definitely not boring.” That was Tumbleweed, who literally reached out to give Split’s disembodied arm a playful little push out of the way so she could shake my hand instead. “You’re the one who kicked that Pencil freak’s ass right before his own sister killed him. I’ve watched that whole fight like ten times, maybe more! It’s even better with music set to it.” She was pumping my hand up and down so rapidly it was almost vibrating my whole body. “That was so freaking awesome, kid! You should carry around guns more often. Err, you know, tranquilizer guns, I mean. Or guns that can shoot little balls with your paint inside them, that could work, right?”
“You know, I’m not sure,” I managed, while returning her enthusiastic handshake as well as I could. I had to use a little bit of purple paint just to match her. “But it might be worth trying out. Just… maybe not in a situation like that again. I think I could happily go the rest of my life without being thrown in a room to have another livestreamed deathmatch fight with a person like Pencil.” I tried to sound all casual about it, but the memory sent a visible shudder through me. I was glad other people could have fun with it, set the video to music and cheer the whole thing, but for me, it had been a fight for my life. I was locked in a room with one of the worst fucking evil monsters in Detroit and had to do everything I could to survive. Sure, I’d mocked him at the time, because it was the best way to get under his skin to protect myself. But thinking about it now was just… it reminded me how close I’d come to being just another one of his victims.
But I wasn’t going to focus on that, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to get into it with all these people. Instead, I just shrugged it off and offered a casual, “I like to be interesting, but maybe not quite that interesting. Someone else gets to fight the next unstoppable cheating super monster.”
“I volunteer!” The cheerful voice came from the last member of the group, Liqueguy. The emerald guy gave a bright smile that seemed to light up the room. Wait, no, it did light up the room. Seriously, his gem-like face was literally glowing. “I mean, not that I think it’s fun to be in that sort of situation, but someone has to. Especially if it means stopping people like that from hurting anyone else.” His glowing face dimmed just a little as he took his turn to shake my hand. “Paintball, hey. I guess you probably know who we all are by now, right? We’ve had a few weeks to get to know each other, mostly through OUTATouch, but still. You’ve got a bit of a disadvantage there.”
Returning that last handshake, I shrugged. “I’ll muddle along. Wait, OUTATouch?” It sounded like ‘outta touch.’
It was Tumbleweed who explained. “Stands for Organized Unconventional Telecommunications Alliance of Touch. Technically that last word should be Touched, but that screws up the cool acronym, so whatever. OUTATouch is basically a bunch of Touched from all over the world who keep in contact, share tips, information, talk about where we’re gonna be if anyone needs us, get info we’re not willing to share in public forums or with the cops. Think of it as like, those SPHERE forums but only for Touched. And because it’s technically not regulated by any government, there’s both good and bad people on there, so you have to be careful about who you talk to and trust. But it’s also super-secure. The people behind it-- well let’s just say they’ve proven no one can get any info out of them or their servers. Ever. Once this is over, if you want, I’ll talk you through getting access. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it though.”
“I’m not,” Liqueguy noted. “Most Touched in Detroit don’t really use it. Dunno why.”
I felt like the Ministry had something to do with that, but I wasn’t certain. And I definitely wasn’t going to get into that with these guys. Instead, I thanked them before adding, “Anyway, yeah, I had a quick briefing on the way up here. Thanks, Devon.” That last bit came with a look over my shoulder, but the guy in question was gone. He’d already stepped out, leaving me to interact with my new opponents.
“He does that,” Split noted with a shrug. “I believe he thinks it is better if he just slips away so we can talk. Maybe build rivalry, or friendship. Maybe both?” A thoughtful look crossed his face before he shook that off. “Personally, I am glad you agreed to come here, little Paintcan. I enjoy seeing your videos online, and wish to see what you can do here.” His arm went from floating in the air to being attached to his body once more, while he added, “Maybe we will have a Yakety or two ourselves before the games are over.”
“You do know his name is Paintball, right?” Tumbleweed asked with a quick glance between us.
“It is fun nickname, is it not?” Split looked a little taken aback, then abruptly worried as he focused on me once more. “I am not meaning offense. If it is something you dislike, I will cease.”
My head shook. “No, it’s okay. Paintball, paintcan, paintbrush, painting, there’s a lot you can do with it.”
Even as I was saying that, the nearby television screen changed to show a tall black woman in a suit and tie, standing in a wide open, white space. “Good morning, players.” A pause came before she smiled. “You have no idea how tempting it was to call you angels just now. Ahem, most of you know me. Paintball, I am Nqobile. Thank you so much for agreeing to participate in these games. Your exhibition run was truly exciting, and we’re all quite eager to see what you, and the rest of this group, can bring to this next event. Which, on that subject, it’s my honor and privilege to tell you all what your first challenge will be.”
The view on the television screen changed from showing the woman in the white void, to showing the arena field. There were dozens of floating platforms of varying shapes and sizes spread through the space. Some were only a foot or two off the ground, while others were as high as a hundred feet up. There were platforms that were flat rectangles, some that looked like pyramids, orbs, tubes, even ramps (including one that was a full loop-de-loop and another that went in a corkscrew shape). Many of which moved around. Meanwhile, the ground itself was covered by a maze of walls, ramps, and other obstacles. Large glowing rings were scattered across the platforms, each big enough for a grown man to walk through. They just hovered in the air, clearly holograms. There was a mix of colors. About three-quarters of them were red, most of what were left were blue, and a handful were purple. Even as we looked at the screen, the rings changed color, mixing themselves around but with the same general ratio.
Finally, there were four arches, each the size of a large doorway, set off to the side apart from the obstacles. They were all a good thirty feet or so away from each other, and each was projecting a holographic image of one of us. Four competitors, four arches, one for each.
“Every time you pass through a ring, it will disappear, reappear somewhere else, and you will earn points,” the woman explained. “One point for a red ring, five points for a blue ring, ten points for a purple ring. But you do not simply score those points. They are stored on you. In order to bank your points, you must pass through your associated arch.
“You may think that returning to pass through the arch as quickly as possible is ideal. But not only does that mean taking the time to do so, during which you cannot gain new points, there’s also the multiplication factor. Every time you pass through five rings of any color, the point value of each color of any subsequent rings is doubled. Red are worth two, blue ten, and purple twenty. This can be doubled again when another five rings are passed through. And so on.”
She let that sink in before continuing. “However, if you are tackled before you reach your arch, your multiplier and any stored points on your person that you have not banked yet by going through the arch will be lost. Your multiplier is also lost when you pass through the arch. You are considered tackled when one of the other players knocks you down, be that into the grass or the surface of wherever you happen to be standing. In Split’s case, only your torso may store points and the multiplier. Sorry, allowing you to rack up points by splitting yourself into all your pieces is just too much of an advantage. By the same token, your torso has to pass through the arch. You can’t just leave a finger down there and send it through whenever you want to bank. And your torso is the part that people need to knock down to tag you.
“If you tackle a person, you gain half the points they had on them, while the rest are lost. All of your point totals will appear in a holographic display on your front and back, so your opponents will know how many points you have. And subsequently, how many they could steal by tagging you. The player with the most banked points when the ten minute timer expires will win that match. There will be three matches in total, with a ten minute break between each.”
After we made it clear we understood everything so far, the woman explained, “Winning a match will earn you two LEAT points. Coming in second will earn you one. Get enough LEAT points by the end of this week to earn one of our rings. As you know, each ring is biolocked to the person who wins them, and only that person is capable of wearing them. You will be able to participate in different games each day, each with varying amounts of points available. Earn ten LEAT points by the end of the week to receive a sapphire ring, fifteen to receive an emerald ring, and twenty to receive a ruby ring. Now, I believe that’s quite enough explanation, and from the sound of things, the arena has been fully cleaned up and prepared.
“Your adoring fans are waiting, how about you all make your grand entrance?”
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