Chương 199: The First Quarter

John Grendel, center for the 49ers, hated kickoffs. Every quarter started with one. Both teams orbited the stadium at increasing speed, building velocity until the kickoff cannon fired and both teams charged at each other from opposite ends of the stadium. Grendel was a planner. He won games in the film room. But no amount of film study prepared you for ten flyers colliding at maximum velocity. The kickoff was the fastest, most violent part of the game. The part that scrambled brains even through T4. 5 armor.

He banked into another orbit and felt the g-forces pile onto his chest. The crowd below stopped being people and became a red-blue smear. The boundary formations flickered past so fast the gold array runes looked continuous. Around him, his team matched his speed, swords cutting through air that felt thick as water at this velocity. McCaffrey's voice cut through the spiritual coordination nexus. Their all-star wing sounded irritated. That little bugger. He's locking onto me with his divine sense. Grendel frowned.

If Leo was locking onto McCaffrey with his divine sense, did that mean he knew their game plan? The 49ers were going to do what the Chiefs had done in week three. Isolate Leo and force him into a one-on-one with McCaffrey. To be honest, it was pretty obvious. The whole league had already figured out how to deal with the miracle kid. That little rook was too new to the game. It was time to put him back in his place. He's scared, Grendel sent back. He's trying to figure out how to avoid you.

Probably calculating the fastest route to the locker room. Laughter rippled through the nexus. Funny, McCaffrey cut in. The clown's divine sense is all over me. Sizing me up. The little bastard thinks he has a shot. Grendel snickered. Then give him what he wants. Their linebacker chuckled. You gonna smoke him. Kid don't know what he got coming. The referee took position behind the starting cannon. Lock in, Grendel sent. The chatter died. Grendel leaned into a final surge of acceleration.

G-forces piled onto his chest. Behind him, the 49ers followed. He led his team through one final turn, one final burst of speed, timed so both teams would meet at center field, far from either fort's flak cannons. BOOM. The kickoff cannon shook the stadium. The crowd erupted. Two hundred thousand voices screamed as ten flyers whipped out of their final turns and aimed themselves at center field. The distance vanished in a blink of an eye. No time to think. No time to react.

Grendel smashed into the first blue jersey he saw. One moment the teams were on opposite ends of the field, hundreds of feet of open air between them. The next, ten bodies collided at the same point in space. The crack of the impacts echoed off the stands and the crowd screamed louder. Shoulder plates slammed into chest plates. Swords clashed against swords. McCaffrey's elbow caught Vince's shoulder guard and both flyers spun away cursing. McCaffrey shook off the collision and went straight for Leo.

Not everyone recovered that fast. Damari's greatsword caught the 49ers' linebacker across the helmet before he could get his bearings. The world went white. The linebacker felt his boots leave his sword before he understood what had happened. His inner ear screamed wrong signals. Up became sideways. The stadium lights smeared into streaks. He was falling and tumbling, arms grabbing at air while his brain tried to remember why he was three hundred fifty feet up in the air. His sword. Where was his sword?

He reached for it with his qi, the motion automatic after fifteen years of professional play. Nothing answered. The blow had scrambled his spiritual pathways. The connection felt faint and hard to grasp. He reached again, harder, and felt the faintest tug from somewhere above and to the left. There. Forty feet away. Shooting toward the ceiling boundary formation. He pulled. The sword reversed course and screamed back toward him. But the ground was rushing up faster than he expected. Two hundred and fifty feet.

The stadium turf resolved from a green blur into individual blades of grass. Blue light in his peripheral vision. Nikki's lightsaber came spinning from above, a blue disc carving toward his exposed back. Without his flying sword, the linebacker had one option: tank it. He ripped his tower shield from his back and hauled it overhead, curling his body behind it. Blue flash. The lightsaber slammed into his shield and ricocheted left. The blade curved below him. He dropped the shield low to catch it. Blue flash.

Back from the right. The lightsaber was everywhere, a spinning disc that refused to give him a moment to breathe. Each impact sprayed sparks past his visor. He was falling and defending at the same time, his divine sense stretched between pulling his flying sword back and tracking Nikki's attacks. The ground kept rushing up. Two hundred feet. One hundred fifty. He could see the yard lines. His sword arrived. The linebacker jumped onto the blade and pulled up hard, the ground filling his vision.

For a half second his attention went to his footing. His tower shield drifted an inch out of position. Nikki's lightsaber punched through the gap. The blade caught him across the ribs. His armor flashed crimson. The impact knocked him sideways and he nearly lost his footing again, one boot slipping before he caught himself. He hauled his sword level at fifty feet above the turf, close enough to see the faces in the front row. His shield display read sixty-three percent.

Thirty-seven percent gone in the opening exchange, and they were still in the opening minute. The linebacker looked up, expecting to see the crowd's eyes on him. Expecting the gasps, the groans, the reaction that followed when a starter got embarrassed on national television. No one was watching. Instead everyone turned toward center field, where two streaks of light wove around each other in attacks too fast for mortal eyes to follow. Blue and red.

Leo Chen and Christian McCaffrey, already deep into their duel, already giving the crowd exactly what they came for.

"LEO! LEO! LEO!" The chant started in the upper bleachers and spread fast. Boots stomped in rhythm. The stadium shook. Below the dueling wings, the rest of the battle unfolded. The Giants pressed their numbers advantage, four flyers swarming the 49ers' three. Vince called targets through the nexus while Damari carved through the chaos with his greatsword, forcing the 49ers into tighter and tighter formations. The gunners answered.

Black bursts bloomed across the midfield as both teams' flak cannons joined the fight. The 49ers' flak detonated in screening patterns, walls of shrapnel designed to drive the Giants back and give their flyers room to breathe. The Giants' gunners laid down covering fire, broad detonations that turned half the midfield into no-fly zones and left the 49ers fewer and fewer places to run. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. Above it all, Leo and McCaffrey kept dueling.

The truth was that anyone below Gold Core couldn't follow what was happening. The exchanges were too fast. The direction changes too sudden. To Foundation Establishment eyes in the cheap seats, Leo and McCaffrey were blurs of color, streaks of red and blue and gold that collided, separated, and collided again faster than the human eye could process. They would have to wait for the replays.

The slow-motion breakdowns during the next break, analysts freezing each exchange frame by frame so the rest of the stadium could understand what had actually happened. But they could watch the scoreboard. Both flyers still in the high nineties. Leo was holding his own against the league's leading scorer.

The Lords and Superiors in the premium boxes didn't need the scoreboard. They could track the battle with their own eyes. Lord Lockheed leaned forward in his seat, wine glass forgotten in his hand. He had come because his grandson insisted. Damian had faced Leo at the Collegiate Flying Aces Championship two years ago. Lord Lockheed suspected the loss had planted something in his grandson's heart that watching McCaffrey dismantle Leo might finally put to rest. Every expert in the stadium had expected Leo to run.

Instead, Leo was attacking. His chainhook lashed out in arcs that forced McCaffrey to back off. Every time McCaffrey tried to press, Leo's hook was already swinging toward his flying sword. Every time McCaffrey created distance, Leo closed it before the veteran could reset.

"How long do you think he lasts, Grandfather?" Damian smirked.

"Two minutes? Three?" Lord Lockheed didn't answer. His eyes stayed fixed on the duel above.

"Interesting," he said finally.

"Very interesting."

"Grandfather?" Lord Lockheed glanced at his grandson. Perhaps a decade in the Catacombs would do the boy some good.

The crowd roared. Something had changed. The two blurs of red and blue that had been weaving around each other were no longer separate. Leo and McCaffrey had merged into a single knot of light, spiraling through the air in tight circles. The stadium projections showed what happened. Leo's chainhook had wrapped around McCaffrey's flying sword, the Bloodhawk. Leo was clinging to it, one hand on the chain, one leg wrapped around Bloodhawk's hilt. In the stands, Tom Wheeler lowered his megaphone.

"What is Leo doing?" Matt squinted at the projection.

"Is that... is he trying to draw on McCaffrey's sword?"

"Don't be ridiculous." Tom laughed.

"Nobody draws formations in the middle of a..." The projection switched to slow motion. Leo's free hand reached into his armor. He pulled out a formation brush. The tip was wet with spiritual ink. Leo pressed it against the flat of McCaffrey's blade and began to draw. In the skies, McCaffrey wrenched his sword sideways, trying to shake the rookie loose. Leo held on. McCaffrey reversed direction, whipping the Bloodhawk through a violent arc that should have sent Leo tumbling. Leo's grip didn't break.

McCaffrey's lightsaber detached from his hip and shot toward Leo's exposed back. Niki was faster. Her own lightsaber knocked McCaffrey's away, blue clashing against red. The two blades locked and spiraled away, Niki guiding McCaffrey's weapon clear while Leo kept drawing. Below them, the tide had turned. Early in the quarter, the Giants had fought four on three. Now it was three on four, Niki's absence leaving Vince, Damari, and Kowalski to hold off the rest of the 49ers.

The 49ers sensed the opening and pushed harder, exploiting their advantage in numbers. But the Giants' plan was working. Leo had already held on for ten seconds. Seven array runes gleamed on the Bloodhawk, wet ink drying in the wind. Then the 49ers burned T4. All of them. Crimson fire erupted along their swords simultaneously as they surged forward with everything they had. Vince barely got out of the way in time. Damari took a hit across the shoulder that dropped his shield to seventy percent.

Kowalski's towershield flickered under the combined assault. McCaffrey wrenched Bloodhawk through a spinning dive, then reversed into a climbing spiral that would have shaken any normal flyer off his tail. But Leo wasn't tailing the Bloodhawk, he was latched on. His chainhook locked tight, his body whipping through every maneuver. McCaffrey couldn't shake him. The teenager was clinging to his sword like a barnacle. Beneath them, the Giants' line buckled and broke, the 49ers punching through toward open sky.

Leo saw the attack. He had to disengage. He released the chainhook and kicked off McCaffrey's blade, dropping onto Sunshifter in a single smooth motion. The Giants' flak cannons were already firing, black bursts blooming in a wall between Leo and the pursuing 49ers. McCaffrey pulled up short, unwilling to chase into his enemy's kill zone. The 49ers split. Two flyers broke left, two broke right, curving around the flak wall in a pincer that would close on Leo from both sides.

McCaffrey drove straight down the middle, burning more T4 to finish the infuriating rookie off. Leo dove into the flak. The black bursts bloomed around him, shrapnel scattering in overlapping cones that should have shredded anyone caught inside. Leo threaded through them. His body twisted left, then right, each micro-adjustment finding the gaps between fragments that his conscious mind couldn't even see. The 49ers' pincer closed on empty air. They pulled up at the edge of the kill zone, unwilling to follow Leo.

McCaffrey skidded to a halt fifty feet from the nearest detonation, watching the rookie juke through a storm of shrapnel that should have eliminated him. McCaffrey glared at Leo. The kid was smiling. Thirty seconds of contact time, and that kid had drawn twenty array runes on his blade. And the little bastard looked like he was enjoying himself.

In the ESPN broadcast booth, the camera zoomed in on McCaffrey's blade. The array runes glowed faintly against the metal, an incomplete pattern that meant nothing to most viewers.

"Alright folks, we're bringing in formation analyst Dr. Rao to help us break down what we just witnessed," Jim said.

"Dr. Rao, what exactly is Leo Chen trying to do here?"

"Thanks, Jim. What Chen is attempting is called a destabilization formation. We saw these back in the early transition era, when teams first started drafting formation masters with monstrous divine sense into flyer positions. The goal is to corrupt the target sword's core arrays. If completed, it makes the weapon nearly impossible to fly."

"So he's trying to take the Bloodhawk out of the game entirely?"

"Essentially, yes. But here's what makes this interesting." Dr. Rao paused.

"This particular formation is modular. Chen doesn't need continuous contact to complete it. He can break off, reengage, and pick up right where he left off. Every time he latches onto McCaffrey's sword, he adds more runes to the pattern." Dave jumped in.

"How long would he need to finish the job?"

"At the rate he was drawing? Approximately three minutes of total contact time."

"Three minutes." Dave let out a low whistle.

"That's an eternity in this league."

"It is," Dr. Rao agreed.

"And McCaffrey knows it."

Once the 49ers understood what they were facing, the counter was simple. Coach Shana radioed the formation specifications to Grendel mid-quarter. The destabilization pattern required exactly ninety array runes to activate. Eighty-nine did nothing. The moment Leo got close, they could shake him off, and the 49ers' sword maintainers would wipe the blade clean during the break. All that work for nothing. Grendel adjusted the team's strategy immediately.

Leo on McCaffrey's flying sword and Niki fighting off his lightsaber meant the Giants were down two flyers. So let him. Let Leo latch on and draw. The 49ers pressed their four-on-three advantage, overwhelming the shorthanded Giants at every exchange. The points came easily after that. Three eliminations in the final minutes of the quarter, traded for nothing. The horn sounded. First quarter: 49ers 3, Giants 0. In the stands, the crowd buzzed with confusion. The analysts were already calling it a failed experiment.

Leo Chen, the prodigy, the micrododging miracle, had wasted an entire quarter on an outdated formation that any competent formation master could erase during the break. The only silver lining was the T4 reserves. The Giants had played conservatively, hoarding their qi while the 49ers burned theirs on aggressive pushes. On average, each Giants player had fourteen more seconds of T4 qi banked than their counterpart. The crowd speculated wildly during the break. What would the Giants do with that advantage?

A coordinated T4 assault? A blitz on the 49ers' fort? Some ability of Leo's they'd been saving? In the Giants' locker room, Harbach looked at Leo.

"Can you do it?" Forty-five seconds. That was the longest Leo had held onto McCaffrey's sword in a single stretch during the first quarter. The Struggle formation needed sixty. But McCaffrey hadn't been the problem. Leo had abandoned his grip when Grendel dove in from his blind side, forcing him to choose between drawing the formation and getting hit. Every failure came from outside. From the rest of the 49ers attacking Leo while he clung to McCaffrey's sword, unable to fight back.

If Vince could keep Grendel occupied. If Damari could draw the striker's attention. If Niki could block the lightsabers. If the Giants could give him sixty uninterrupted seconds. Leo looked back at Harbach.

"Yes, Coach. I'm ready." Harbach studied him for a long moment. The noise from the stadium filtered down through the ceiling, two hundred thousand people eager to see what the Giants had prepared for the second quarter.

"I trust you," Harbach said.

"Show them what you got." Leo smiled. The Giants would run the same strategy for the second quarter. Leo would latch onto McCaffrey, hold on, and draw runes while the rest of the team held off everyone else. The 49ers would expect it. They would let him do it, confident their maintainers had already wiped the Bloodhawk clean. Confident Leo was making the same mistake twice. They didn't know about the real formation. The one that only needed sixty seconds to draw. The Struggle of Ten Thousand Swords Seeking Heaven.