Chương 175: Welcome to the NFL

The starting horn's echo was still dying when Vince's voice came through the nexus. Overload left. Chen, ceiling. Keep the pace up. The formation split. Leo and Kowalski were already climbing. Below them, Vince and the two other flyers peeled away in a diving arc toward the Bills' fort. The Bills' Center responded instantly, barking orders through his own nexus, pulling flyers back to protect the gunners. Which left Hurns and Snead, the Bills' starting wings, free to hunt.

Both starters were angling toward Leo now, their flying swords carving parallel tracks through the air. As they closed, each wing drew a lightsaber from their dantian and cocked it back, fingers wrapped around the handle like a quarterback settling into a throw. That was what made wings dangerous. A flyer on a sword was one threat. A wing was two.

They could launch their lightsabers and attack with them remotely, guiding the blade through the air with divine sense alone while the wing attacked from the opposite side. Leo knew. He'd been the one doing it for years. He dominated the CFL with his Eclipse and a lightsaber. Opponents who could handle him couldn't handle his lightsaber. Opponents who tracked his saber lost sight of his Eclipse. Now he was facing two wings and their lightsabers.

Four independent trajectories converging on him from angles he couldn't predict. But lightsabers had no self-propulsion. They moved through qi guidance alone. A thrown blade could curve, could track, could adjust its arc. It couldn't accelerate. Once airborne, air resistance bled its momentum with every second. Which meant speed was the answer. If Leo flew fast enough, the lightsabers couldn't keep up. They'd fall behind.

The wings could throw them ahead, try to predict his path, but at maximum combat velocity those weapons became slow and predictable. Leo dropped his stance, flattening his torso against Sunshifter until his chin nearly touched the metal. The chain hook stayed in his dantian. A standing flyer caught the wind like a sail. A prone flyer cut through it. Now all he needed to do was avoid flak for fifteen minutes.

"LEO! LEO! LEO!" The chant rolled through the stadium in waves, two hundred thousand voices finding a rhythm that matched the stomp of boots against bleachers. Leo felt something unlock in his chest. This was what he'd been missing. The pressure. The attention. In summer training, in the empty scrimmage fields... Hurns attacked. The lightsaber left his hand spinning, a red disc trailing light as it carved a flat arc toward Leo's projected path.

Divine sense guided it, bending the trajectory into a curve that tightened as it closed. Leo read the throw instantly. He dodged. Sunshifter bit into the turn and Leo felt his momentum bleed away. The lightsaber passed twenty feet behind him, its arc now useless, Hurns already pulling it back for another throw. But the break had killed his velocity. He was slow now. Vulnerable. Snead saw it. The second wing was already diving, closing the distance while Leo rebuilt speed.

At this pace, Snead would be in range in four seconds. Leo poured qi into Sunshifter and the sword surged forward. He pressed himself flat against the blade, wind tearing at his armor. He felt the boundary barriers approaching, the formation walls that marked the edge of legal airspace. He dove hard, trading altitude for speed, and felt the wind ripping across his armor. Behind him, Snead was already recalculating. The gap was opening. Four seconds to intercept had become six.

The rookie's drag profile was too clean, his top speed too fast. Chasing him in a straight line was pointless. Snead banked wide, looking for a new angle. For thirty seconds, they tested each other. Feints and counters. The wings pushed; Leo gave ground. The pattern was establishing itself, and Leo didn't like where it was headed. Break left. Shell incoming. Vince's warning came through the nexus a half-second before Leo felt the qi pooling in the flak cannon below. He broke left.

The detonation bloomed below his previous position. A black burst of smoke and fire. The shell had climbed from below, but the cone blew sideways, angled forward along Leo's flight path. The gunner had shaped the detonation toward where he was going, not where the shell had come from. Thousands of T4 splinters sprayed from the blast in a widening cone, black metal fanning across his flight path. Up close those gaps didn't exist. At range they were survivable.

Each fragment carried enough spiritual charge to drain ten percent of his shield on contact. The shockwave buffeted his flight path, rattled his armor plates, pushed him another few feet off course. But eighty feet was a safe distance. No shrapnel hit him. No micrododge required. The splinters kept traveling, racing until they struck the boundary formation. The barrier flickered where each splinter hit, absorbing the impact, pulling the spent projectiles into collection channels.

By tomorrow, maintenance would have every splinter melted down and pressed into new shells. Above and behind, Hurns recovered his lightsaber. Below and to the left, Snead accelerated into the gap the shell had created. The gunners tracked Leo too, their divine sense locked on his position. He was boxed. If he climbed, Hurns had the angle. If he dove, Snead was waiting. If he held course, the next shell would detonate closer. Kowalski. Screen high. The linebacker was already moving.

His tower shield blazed with qi as he swept into position between Leo and Hurns, the barrier formation expanding to block the angle. Leo dove. Snead had expected him to climb. The wing's sword tilted upward, his lightsaber already thrown toward the altitude Leo wasn't taking. He was clear. For a second. For two. The gunners fired together. High-low bracket. One shell climbing toward his current altitude, the other cutting below to deny the dive. Standard trap.

Force the target between two detonations and let the overlapping shrapnel fields do the work. Break toward our fort. Ninety degrees. Leo turned. Sunshifter carved a hard arc toward Giants territory. The turn cost him thirty miles per hour, maybe forty, but it pulled him clear. The shells detonated behind him, two black bursts blooming in sequence, shrapnel scattering through empty air. Three minutes of the same exchange, repeated until it stopped feeling like combat and started feeling like work. The wings threw.

Leo dodged. The gunners fired. Leo broke. Kowalski screened when the angles collapsed. Vince called warnings through the nexus. Leo listened. But Leo was running out of field. Three minutes of breaking left had pushed him toward the eastern boundary, and the gunners were waiting exactly where the wings had driven him. Break high. You're boxed. Reset. Leo broke high. Sunshifter screamed into a vertical climb, trading the horizontal cage for open sky. The wings had to abandon their formation to follow.

The trap collapsed. But the climb cost him. Momentum bled away with every foot of altitude. By the time he leveled out, Hurns was already on his tail. He needed thirty seconds of uninterrupted acceleration. Thirty seconds to rebuild the velocity that made him untouchable. The gunners gave him twelve. Break left. Shell incoming. Leo broke left. The detonation bloomed below him, shrapnel racing upward through the space he'd vacated. Ninety feet of clearance. Safe.

But the break slowed him down and Hurns had been counting on exactly that. The wing's lightsaber came from the left, thrown the moment Leo committed to the break. Hurns himself drove in from the right. A closing vice. Leo's reduced speed meant he couldn't escape. Two threats. Converging. Hurns's qi signature flared crimson. T4 escalation. The veteran was done playing. Leo answered. Red fire erupted along Sunshifter's edge as he activated T4 qi in the blade. The acceleration slammed him flat against the metal.

He wasn't running anymore. He was charging. Hurns's eyes widened. A rookie driving straight at an All-Pro wing. The lightsaber curving in from behind to complete the pincer. There was no escape from this angle. The veteran knew it. Leo knew it. Hurns committed to the intercept. Leo broke right. The zag came at the last possible moment. Sunshifter's G-Force Bleeding Formation flared gold as the sword screamed through a turn that would have torn a lesser flyer from his blade.

Hurns cut to follow, his lightsaber curving to match, and suddenly they were dancing. Two flight paths carved lightning bolts across the sky. Zag, counter-zag. Break left, break right. Hurns threw everything he had into the pursuit, decades of experience driving each adjustment. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. But Leo was faster. Each time Hurns committed to an intercept angle, Leo was already breaking the other way.

Each correction Hurns made arrived just late enough that the gap between them widened instead of closed. Hurns fell further behind with every exchange, his momentum bleeding away each time he tried to close. Three zigzags. Four. Five. Hurns pulled out of the chase, chest heaving, his T4 window burning away on a rookie who wouldn't stand still. His lightsaber drifted back to his hand, its red blade retracting. Leo accelerated toward open sky, the distance between them growing with every second. Nice exchange, chief.

Now get out of there before Snead catches up. Leo was already climbing. The stadium erupted.

In the broadcast booth, Jim was silent for three full seconds. Dave spoke first.

"Did that just happen?"

"That just happened." Jim's voice carried something close to disbelief.

"A nineteen-year-old rookie just went blade to blade with an All-Pro wing and came out ahead."

"Hurns escalated to T4. He committed everything to that intercept. And Chen just... danced around him."

"Look at the replay, Dave. Count the direction changes." The screen showed the exchange frame by frame. Two flight paths weaving through each other like braided lightning.

"One. Two. Three. Four. Five direction changes in one point eight seconds. And look at the exit velocities, Jim. Chen comes out of the final zag eleven miles per hour faster than Hurns."

"The reaction speed. That's what we're seeing. Chen is reading Hurns's movements and responding."

"That's not a rookie skill, Jim. That's not even a veteran skill. That's something else entirely." The camera cut to Hurns, drifting in the air where he'd broken off the chase. The All-Pro wing was staring at his flying sword like he'd never seen it before.

"I think Hurns is asking himself the same question we are," Jim said.

"What exactly did the Giants draft?"

Hurns pulled his sword into a climbing turn. Twelve years in the league. Three Pro Bowl selections. And a nineteen-year-old rookie had just made him look like an amateur on national television. The scoreboard showed five seconds burned from his T4 window. Five seconds chasing a kid who wouldn't stand still. Five seconds closer to the conversation he'd been dreading all preseason. Coach Brady wanted to see what Sutton, their second-string wing, could do. Everyone knew it.

Sutton had been electric in training camp, and Brady had never kept a roster spot warm out of loyalty. Hurns had seen it happen to others. The quiet meeting. The trade rumors. The slow slide from starter to backup to gone. He couldn't let a rookie end his career. Snead. We need to finish this. I know. Both of us. Full commit. Burn whatever it takes. A pause. Brady's going to ask why we spent our windows on a preseason game. Brady's going to ask why we couldn't handle one rookie.

Hurns watched Chen climbing toward the ceiling, that infuriating flat stance cutting through the air. Which conversation do you want to have? Silence. Then: On your mark. Hurns angled his sword toward the rookie's position. Mark. Two signatures flared crimson. Two wings accelerating in converging arcs. Everything they had left, committed to eliminating one teenager.

Leo felt the spike in their qi signatures. T4. The wings were escalating. Chen, they're burning reserve. You can match or you can disengage. Your call. Leo made the calculation in a heartbeat. He could burn T4 and match the pace. Stay fast enough to keep the gap open. But that would cost him seconds off his reserve. Or he could refuse to escalate. Let them close the distance. Take the pressure and survive it at T3. The crowd wanted him to fight.

He could feel it in the rhythm of the chant, the noise hammering down from the stands. They wanted to see Flyer Seven prove himself. But Harbach's words echoed in his memory. Hide the micrododging. Leo couldn't do what they wanted. Not tonight. All he could do was survive. And if surviving meant letting the Bills burn T4 while Leo saved his? That was a victory too. Leo held at T3. Hurns closed to forty feet. Close enough that his divine sense could read Leo's muscle tension.

Close enough that he could see the rookie's eyes tracking him through peripheral vision. Hurns threw his lightsaber, spinning it so fast the blade looked like a solid ring of light. Leo took the hit. The lightsaber glanced off his shoulder armor, the impact dispersing across his shield in a flash of red light. His shield display flickered: 100% to 92%. But Leo hadn't slowed. Hadn't dodged. Hadn't burned a single second of T4. He'd traded eight percent of his shield for thirty feet of distance.

Because Hurns's throw had cost him speed. The act of throwing broke his tuck, and the air resistance bled off his momentum. By the time he recovered, Leo was far away. That's the play, Vince said through the nexus. Take the hits. Trade shield for position. Make them pay for every swing. Leo felt the bruise forming beneath his armor. The T4 impact had been harder than anything he'd faced in college. Even through the shield, his shoulder ached.

In the stands, Tom Wheeler lowered his megaphone.

"He's not engaging," Matthew Stammer said. The words came out half-confused, half-worried.

"He's just... running." Leo's former high school classmates had never seen him run from a fight. They watched Leo's figure streak across the upper airspace, a blue-and-red blur against the stadium lights. Two Bills wings trailing behind. Flak bursts blooming in his wake.

"He's surviving," Tom said.

"Against their starters." Matt's confusion was fading.

"Both starting wings. Both starting gunners." Tom raised the megaphone again.

"LET'S GO SEVEN! LET'S GO!" The Bulldog Army roared behind him. Their voices joined his, drowning out the Bills supporters around them. A man in a Bills jersey turned around. Red-faced. Beer sloshing.

"Your boy's chicken!" The heckler cupped his hands around his mouth.

"Running scared! Can't even fight back!" Tom ignored him. Matt pointed at the scoreboard. Chen: Shield 76%. T4 Reserve: 23. 2 seconds. Hurns: Shield 100%. T4 Reserve: 13. 2 seconds. Snead: Shield 100%. T4 Reserve: 20. 1 seconds.

"Holy shit," Tom breathed. His former roommate was winning the resource war.

The Bills' wings pushed their swords to speeds Leo's T3 qi couldn't match. The gap was shrinking again. Forty feet. Thirty-five. Thirty. Two lightsabers flew. Snead's spun high, a red streak climbing above Leo's altitude. Hurns's cut low, spinning flat like a saw blade. Kowalski. Now. The linebacker was already there. His tower shield blazed into position above Leo, the barrier formation catching Snead's lightsaber mid-spin. Red met gold in a spray of sparks and the blade tumbled away, its arc broken. Leo climbed.

Hurns's lightsaber tracked him, curving upward, but Kowalski's intervention had bought half a second. Enough to build speed. Enough to pull ahead before the blade's arc could catch up. Both lightsabers missed. Leo accelerated toward center field, the gap opening again. Behind him, Hurns cursed. The wings were bleeding reserves faster than Leo was bleeding shield. Every throw cost qi to guide and recall. Every T4 second spent chasing was a second they wouldn't have later.

But they kept pressing, and the airspace kept shrinking, and Leo felt them building a box, and this time Kowalski was too far away to help. Leo made a choice. He decided to go somewhere where they couldn't follow.

The crowd fell silent. One moment, Leo Chen was a streak of blue and red racing across the upper airspace. The next, he dove. A straight vertical plunge toward the field below, Sunshifter's edge screaming against the wind, gold qi streaming off the blade in a tail of light.

"WHAT IS HE DOING?" Jim's voice cracked through the broadcast. Leo fell past the wings' altitude. Past the optimal gunner angles. Past Vince and the rest of the Giants. The stadium gasped. At five feet, he pulled out. Sunshifter screamed as Leo forced it horizontal. Gold light flared along Sunshifter's edge as the G-Force Bleeding Formations dumped everything they could. The rest went into his body. His vision grayed at the edges. He saw the grass ripple beneath him from the wake. But he was level.

Flying below the gunners' effective range. Flying where the shells would have to track nearly straight down to reach him. The Bills' gunners panicked. Both cannons fired wild, desperate bursts. Shells detonated sixty, seventy, eighty feet around him. Shrapnel scattered harmlessly through air he'd already left behind. One fragment flew closer than the rest, and Leo juked two inches without noticing. The Bills' Soldiers scrambled. At five feet, he was close enough to spit on. Close enough for spell arts.

Close enough for someone to jump and grab him. Three Soldiers raised their weapons. CLIMB! CLIMB NOW! Leo poured qi into Sunshifter. The sword surged upward, carrying him out of the Soldiers' range, carrying him back into the airspace where wings and gunners waited. But the dive had broken the pattern. Hurns and Snead were repositioning, their carefully constructed box scattered. Leo had bought himself another thirty seconds. His hands were shaking. His lungs burned.

The g-forces had left spots dancing at the edge of his vision. Worth it.

Tom's megaphone hung forgotten at his side.

"Did he just..." Matt couldn't finish the sentence.

"He buzzed the Soldiers." Tom's voice was hollow.

"He dove into the danger zone to break their formation."

"That's insane. That's absolutely insane."

"That's Leo." The Bills heckler had nothing to say. He was staring at the field with his mouth open, his beer tilting forgotten in his hand. Around them, the stadium was finding its voice again.

"SE-VEN! SE-VEN! SE-VEN!" The chant built like a wave, rolling through the stands, growing louder with every repetition.

Don't ever do that again. Understood. Leo's heart was still hammering. The dive had worked, but it had been stupid. Reckless. The kind of move that got players injured. But he was still in the air. Still unbroken. Still flying. Hurns and Snead were regrouping. Their T4 reserves were critical now. Leo watched through his omnidirectional awareness as the crimson fire along their swords flickered and dimmed. They were pulling back.

In the coaching box, Harbach was grinning. The dive had been reckless. Stupid. Exactly the kind of thing a teenager with more talent than sense would try in his first NFL game. And it had worked. The Bills' formation was scattered. Their gunners were recalibrating. Their wings had lost their pursuit angles. Leo had bought himself breathing room with nothing but audacity and G-force tolerance.

"That's my boy," Harbach murmured.

"Coach." The analyst's voice cut through his satisfaction.

"You need to see this." Harbach turned. The monitor showed Leo's dive in slow motion. Frame by frame. The shells detonating around him. The shrapnel scattering.

"There." The analyst tapped the screen.

"Sixty-three feet from the nearest detonation. Watch his left shoulder." Harbach watched. A fragment flew through the frame. At sixty feet, the chance of intersection was negligible. Ten percent. Leo's shoulder dipped two inches. The fragment passed through empty air. Harbach's fist hit the desk. The sound echoed through the coaching box. Staff members flinched. The analyst took a step back. Sixty feet should have been safe.

Sixty feet was supposed to be the buffer zone, the distance where flak became background noise instead of active threat. Leo shouldn't have needed to dodge anything. But his body had moved anyway. The instinct had fired on its own, visible to anyone who knew what to look for. Harbach pulled up the scout feeds. Every visiting box was focused on Leo's position. Formation analysis arrays tracked his movement patterns. Spiritual resonance scanners mapped his qi fluctuations. They had what they needed.

The micrododging was exposed. By tomorrow, every defensive coordinator in the league would be studying the footage. By next week, they'd have countermeasures. By the regular season opener, Leo would face gunners who knew exactly how to defend against what they'd seen. Movement on the main display caught his eye. Harbach looked up. The Bills' flyers were changing course. All of them. Converging on a single point. Harbach grabbed his radio.

"Deluca. They're running a full blitz. Five on one. You know what that means." He didn't wait for a response.

"They're going to herd him into the flak zones. Force him to micrododge. Every second he stays up there, he gives them more footage." Harbach's voice hardened.

"Get him out. Have him bench himself. Now."