Chapter 356: 356 | Thirty Percent Above Parameters
Jordan made a sound that might have been agreement or might have been the noise a man makes when accepting that the universe has decided to kill him through bureaucratic scheduling rather than dramatic combat.
The relay platform hummed louder as the technicians completed their calibrations. A woman in a grey FGRA uniform approached Misato with a clipboard and began reviewing the deployment manifest, checking names against student IDs while her assistant confirmed medical clearances through a tablet linked to the academy’s health system.
The process took four minutes and produced zero surprises, though the FGRA woman paused on Hikaru’s medical clearance with a frown that suggested the nurse had flagged something in the system that technically met requirements while heavily implying that participation was inadvisable.
Hikaru stared at the woman until the woman moved on.
At five fifty-eight, the platform’s amber glow shifted to green, and the relay crystals at the perimeter began rotating in their housing units with a low grinding sound that vibrated through the concrete staging area and into my bones. The dimensional targeting system locked onto our assigned gate coordinates, a forest biome located somewhere in the Sierra Nevada foothills where an FGRA sensor station had confirmed gate formation thirty-six hours prior.
"Final check," Misato called. "Sound off by position."
"Detection one, Fox. Active."
"Detection two, Tanaka. Active."
"Area control, Wayne. Active."
"Area control, Pope. Active."
"Damage anchor, Love. Active."
"Damage anchor, Davenport." Blair’s voice carried the frost of someone who found the entire accountability exercise beneath her dignity. "Active."
"Flex assault, Monroe. Active."
"Flex assault, Mendoza." Javier’s voice cracked slightly on the second word. "Active."
"Flex assault, Leone." Charles sounded bored. "Active."
"Command, Ayame. All positions confirmed." Misato looked at each of us in turn, her lime green eyes cataloguing readiness levels and fear indicators and the thousand small tells that separated people who would hold formation from people who would break. "Move to platform."
We stepped onto the relay pad in our assigned order. The green light intensified underfoot, warm through the soles of my boots and climbing through my ankles into my calves like stepping into a bath that existed in frequencies my body wasn’t designed to process. The relay crystals spun faster. Reality became thinner at the edges of the platform, the staging area beyond the circle losing definition and color as though the world was being slowly erased from the outside in.
Belle stood to my left with her crossbow held at ready and her blue hair tied in a combat braid that kept everything clear of her face and her eyes. Naomi stood at my right with her staff channeling the faintest trace of blue-white energy at its tip, the Gold buff humming beneath her skin in a constant low-frequency vibration that I could feel through the twelve inches of air between our shoulders. Jordan occupied the position behind me with his shadows already pooling at his feet in preparation for deployment, dark tendrils that flickered against the platform’s green glow.
Hikaru stood across the formation at the far edge of the circle, her position placing her directly beside Blair’s squad sector. Red eyes forward. Jaw set. The wound I’d treated eighteen hours ago hidden beneath compression bandages and tactical composite, invisible to everyone except the two people who’d seen the blood on the bathroom tiles.
Blair stood at the formation’s offensive point with flames licking at her fingertips in blue-white curls that raised the ambient temperature of the entire platform by several degrees. Her red hair caught the relay light and burned like copper wire. She looked exactly like what she was: the most dangerous person in the group, the one most likely to save everyone or kill everyone depending on which version of Blair Davenport showed up when the pressure hit.
The relay system completed its targeting sequence, and the technician’s voice came through the platform speakers. "Coordinates locked. Gate location confirmed at Sierra Nevada foothills, sector seven. Initial scan classification: C-rank forest biome. Entity density within standard parameters. You are clear for deployment in three, two, one."
Green became white.
The world folded.
I’d been through gates four times now, and the transit sensation never got easier. Reality compressed into a needle’s width and punched through dimensional fabric that felt like being shoved through a car wash made of television static and vinegar. My inner ear protested. My vision strobed. Every nerve in my body fired simultaneously in a confused signal that translated roughly as "this is wrong, please stop existing in two places at once."
Then it was over.
My boots hit dirt. Real dirt, soft and loamy with the smell of decomposing vegetation and living things and something underneath it all that tasted like ozone on the back of my tongue. Sound flooded in, a wall of insect noise and bird calls and the creaking of massive trees that sounded like wooden ships at sea. Humidity hit my face like a wet towel. The air was thick, hot, and so saturated with moisture that breathing felt like drinking from a sponge.
I blinked and the forest materialized around me in stages. Trees first, enormous things with trunks wider than cars covered in moss and vines that hung from branches so high the canopy disappeared into green darkness sixty feet overhead. Undergrowth so dense I couldn’t see more than fifteen feet in any direction, layers of ferns and broad-leafed plants and flowers the size of dinner plates in colors that didn’t exist in California. The ground was a tangle of exposed roots and fallen leaves, uneven and treacherous, with patches of standing water reflecting green light filtered through the canopy above.
This was not a standard C-rank forest biome.
This was a jungle. A massive, ancient, suffocating jungle that looked like someone had taken the Amazon rainforest and fed it steroids and mana for a few thousand years.
"Positions," Misato called. Her voice carried the professional calm of someone whose internal alarm system was screaming at full volume while the trained exterior maintained complete composure. "Formation One. Sound off."
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