Lucas’ smile faltered, then fell away. Sigrid just kept staring at him. I expected someone to do something, for Annabelle to cut in and continue the game, but she just watched along with everyone else. Finally, Lucas looked away. Only then did a tiny smile appear on the edge of Sigrid’s lips, and she turned away from him. Lianna put her hand on Sigrid’s shoulder, no doubt apologizing, then Sigrid strode serenely past everyone and out of the circle, going straight to the ball and picking it up.

  “Hey Death Girl,” I said, “anything you want to say to Sigrid? I can loop you in.”

  Chika flashed me a grin, her fang dangling over her lower lip. I smiled back and nodded.

  Me: You’re on the line with Death Girl.

  Chika: Hey Sigrid.

  Sigrid’s eyes widened in surprise and darted up to look at us. Chika waved.

  Chika: You know what to do.

  Sigrid nodded, her face a determined mask.

  Chika: Fuck ‘em up.

  Sigrid: You know it, Death Girl.

  I was happy the moniker had stuck, but not with the swearing.

  Me: Language!

  Chika: It doesn’t count if it’s not out loud.

  The others were starting to look at us, clearly wondering what was going on. Poom. The sound of Sigrid bouncing the ball drew their attention back to the floor.

  Sigrid started doing what Annabelle had done, bouncing the ball as she stalked around the outside of the white circle. However, unlike Annabelle, Sigrid was not smiling. She was not faking throws. She was tracking Lucas the entire time. And he was tracking her. As she moved, so did he. And so did all the other Players, keeping their distance from him and making sure not to stand in the path between the two of them.

  Me: Hey Sigrid, before I close the connection there’s just one thing.

  Sigrid: What’s that?

  Me: You’re forgetting you can use items.

  Sigrid: Huh?

  Me: And Lianna, you might want to prepare yourself. It might get windy.

  Lianna: Huh?

  Me: Have fun.

  Then I closed the connection. Sigrid looked up at me frowning, then the metaphorical lightbulb went off over her head and a regal smile spread across her lovely face.

  Two great white feathered wings sprouted resplendently from her back. Gasps and murmurs of surprise rippled around the arena. Sigrid decided to go full out and a breeze from nowhere blew her hair majestically as sparks of electricity crackled around her. More oohs and ahs.

  Sigrid made eye contact with Lianna and nodded. Lianna nodded back and took a knee. Some of the other Poisonball Players gave her funny looks, which she ignored. Then Sigrid flapped her angelic wings a few times triggering the Back Off power, blasting strong gusts of wind at the Players in the arena.

  Several of them were blown off their feet and all of the rest struggled to maintain their balance, all except Lianna, who was prepared for it. Then Sigrid rose abruptly into the air to get a straight shot down at any Player she liked, and hurled the ball directly at Lucas before he’d recovered from the Back Off wind.

  It was like the ball had been shot from a Howitzer. With her full strength behind it, it whizzed straight at her target almost too fast to see. But then, before the ball hit Lucas, it suddenly veered to the side and — poom! — struck the ground in front of Lianna and bounced up to hit her square in the chest.

  What the what?

  I started re-evaluating Players on the floor in case I’d missed something. I thought that maybe a Droog or someone had used a power to somehow mess with Sigrid’s throw or something, but I couldn’t find anything I could see being used that way. Next, I looked over to where Teams Invictus, Droogs, and Overgeared sat and caught Troy high-fiving Warren Douglas, the leader of the Droogs, and it all clicked into place. Right idea, wrong Droog.

  Warren had telekinesis.

  So that was how they were gonna play, huh? Perhaps it was cheating, but Annabelle had never said people not actively playing Poisonball couldn’t use their powers too, and that’s how rules around there seemed to work: that which was not expressly forbidden was allowed.

  Still, that didn’t stop them from being dirty cheating buggers, and it didn’t stop the righteous anger from rising from the members of Team Maple Leaf around me.

  “What just happened?” Chika said. I explained it to her. “Those dirty cheating bastards,” she said.

  Meh. Buggers, bastards, either worked.

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  Byron and Nina behind us overheard. “You aren’t going to let them get away with that, are you?” Byron said.

  “Are you saying I should become a dirty cheating bugger?” I said.

  “Uh, yes?”

  “I’ll do what I can from here, but we’ll just have to hope Lianna and Sigrid can find their own revenge with the ball.”

  Chika snorted. “Sigrid maybe, she fires that ball like a bullet, but I don’t think Lianna’s going to be much good.”

  “Chika!” Nina admonished.

  “What? Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “Well, still. It’s not nice to draw attention to it.”

  Lianna looked up at me with a look that was half guilt and half righteous indignation. I reopened the telepathic connection with her.

  Me: Don’t worry about it.

  Lianna: Should I take it as a compliment that they wanted to get rid of me first?

  Me: That’s a great way of looking at it.

  Lianna: I’m really sorry.

  Me: Like I said, don’t worry about it.

  Lianna: Motherfuckers gotta pay.

  Me: That’s the spirit.

  Down on the arena floor, Lianna had left the circle and taken the ball. She was standing beside Sigrid, who’d returned to the ground and folded her wings back into the armor. I could almost hear her teeth grinding. The two of them whispered together, then Lianna handed Sigrid the ball and broke away, darting around the edge of the arena to the opposite side. I was curious to see what kind of strategy the two of them had cooked up.

  As it turned out, it wasn’t that complicated. I suppose I should’ve expected as much, given that neither of them were hardcore gamers. Their plan was to stay on opposite sides of the arena and keep throwing the ball at Lucas, hoping for the best.

  By this point it didn’t really make a difference who they hit, it’s not like they could change the fact that Team Player and Team Maple Leaf would be entering the quest last. It was purely a matter of principle.

  In an ordinary game of dodgeball that would’ve been a sound plan, but in a game against Players with powers, they would have had as much luck closing their eyes and throwing the ball at random.

  Lucas watched Sigrid’s every move. Between his superspeed and Warren’s telekinesis there was no way the ball was going to hit him. Or at least, that would have been the case if nobody else interfered.

  I used my synthesized version of Andy’s nullification power to cancel Lucas’ superspeed the same way Andy had when they’d fought in the tournament. That would take care of him. As for Warren’s telekinesis, I had other plans to deal with that.

  Sigrid fired the ball again. Fortunately, I’d already triggered my own superspeed. I didn’t intend to move with it, I just wanted to be able to watch in slow motion.

  The ball was headed directly toward Lucas, and sure enough it changed its trajectory midway to aim for the Team Spice Player. All it took was a telekinetic nudge from me to make it veer back, but to make sure I kept using my telekinesis to guide it exactly where I wanted it to go, right into Lucas’ stupid face.

  I don’t know who looked more shocked, Lucas, who got hit, Warren, who’d tried to change its direction to hit the Spice Girl, or Sigrid, who watched her throw wobble mid-air before actually hitting her target.

  Lucas went down. It may have been just a red rubber ball, but taking it in the face at that velocity was like being hit with a cannonball. His nose bled freely and he was a bit slow to pick himself up, but he did. He may have been a wanker, but he was a tough wanker. Cackling to myself, I switched my nullification to Warren’s telekinesis, hoping he’d try to use it again and get even more confused when it didn’t work.

  This was almost a bad mistake.

  After getting back up, Lucas used his superspeed dash to the outside of the circle, grabbing the ball along the way and tossing into the mass of Players in the ring before anyone knew what happened. Fortunately, I still had my own superspeed on. Even with that, it all happened so fast I wasn’t able to accurately redirect the throw to hit someone specific, it was all I could do to alter the ball’s course to miss the Legionnaire Lucas had targeted and have it bounce to Lianna outside the ring.

  Lianna picked the ball up, albeit hesitantly. She tossed it immediately into the circle, not bothering to aim, like she was playing hot potato instead of dodgeball. It wasn’t a strong throw and the Players managed to avoid it easily, but Sigrid was still directly opposite her and picked up the ball next.

  Me: Nice pass, Lianna.

  Lianna: You say that like it was on purpose.

  Warren had tried to redirect her throw and when I glanced up at him I took immense pleasure in the confused look on his face after his power failed to work. Ha. Suck it, dillweed.

  I could tell Sigrid’s next target was the Droog on the floor, but he was always hiding behind another Player. She frowned and her eyes darted around looking for a clearer target.

  I looped Sigrid back into the telepathic connection.

  Me: Throw it at the Droog.

  Sigrid: But he’s always behind someone else.

  Me: Let me handle that.

  Down on the arena floor, Sigrid grinned. She dribbled the ball with one hand, the other pointed straight at the Droog. Then she grabbed the ball as it boinged up and threw it hard. I gave a little telekinetic shove to the hapless Team Happy Player who was blocking the Droog, just enough to nudge them out of the way. The ball rocketed past their ear to smack the Droog in the face, just like it had his pal Lucas. His nose was also broken, but he wasn’t quite as tough and was a lot slower to get up.

  One by one, other teams were eliminated. While the Players threw the ball around down on the floor it became mostly a game between me and the Axis from the stands. They won the next round, knocking the Spice Girl to the outer ring. Sorry Tiff. From there, I just concentrated on keeping the Legionnaire in the ring, and did a pretty good job. He was the tenth one knocked out, second to last, meaning Achmed’s Legion would be the second group to enter the quest.

  Despite being relegated to be the tenth team to join the quest, I couldn’t feel at all upset. After all, I’d seen Warren use his Push Your Luck power so now it was mine to use too. It was how he managed to get the Spice Girl knocked out so quickly, but he wasn’t able to use it again because of the severe mana cost. That wouldn’t be as much of an issue for me.

  One of the benefits of using up all my mana so often while crafting was that my personal mana reserve had grown considerably. It was like working out, only the muscle I was strengthening by pushing the limit repeatedly was my mana capacity.

  I’d been curious about how my mana compared to others, and this gave me a great way to test that. I used Push Your Luck once during the Poisonball match, and while it had zorched nearly half of Warren’s mana it only used up about a tenth of mine. By my reckoning, it meant I had about four times the mana capacity that he had, and that wasn’t even counting the extra reserves I had through various battery powers and items.

  So yeah. It was hard to feel bad about how things had worked out. Then again, I had no idea what the actual quest was going to be, but that didn’t really matter much either. Whatever it was, I was sure I’d find a way to make it go my way.

  Ah. So this was what confidence felt like.

  Up next: The quest revealed