When Crow had first been told of the next task’s scheduling, three days away, he’d thought it was an age. Three days was far too much time to wait for such a thing. More than was necessary to prepare, less than was needed to adjust.

By the middle of the second day, he’d realised just how little time that was.

Time enough to find the best treatments for Astra. Time enough to administer them. Time enough, even, to observe how she responded to the magical healing, and check whether she needed to have them re-administered.

But barely.

Being forced to so carefully measure their limited time, counting seconds as though they were minutes, made Crow all the more aware of just how quickly it was passing.

By the time the sun set on their second day, it scarcely felt like even their first. And the time Crow was able to spend asleep before it rose anew seemed a far cry from the eight hours he spent in his bed.

He had risen from his room groggy, light of head and rough of throat, comforted, in some small way, by the scent of meat greeting his nose.

“Morning.” Astra chirped, lifting a steaming plate with one hand as she smiled at him.

She wasn’t alone in the room, Unity, Xeno and even Gem were already seated.

Crow found it hard to look at any of them, however, his eyes almost gravitationally shifting towards the pile of eggs, sausages and bacon laid out over the platter.

Apparently noticing his hunger, Astra smirked.

“Fresh from the kitchens, apparently. I was about to come and wake you so it wouldn’t be cold by the time you got up.”

She set the plate down on a knee-high table, and Crow hurried towards the chair next to it. A knife and fork practically flew into his hands as he savaged the dish. He didn’t slow until half the eggs and three sausages had disappeared into his gullet.

“Hold on, how late did I sleep?”

He knew Gem well enough to be aware that getting up after her was far from good.

“It’s about noon.” Gem said. “We have another three hours before our task, hence the big breakfast.”

Crow glanced at the girl, feeling his tongue turn to lead at the sight of her. She looked away before he could.

“Is everyone ready?” Xeno asked, apparently oblivious. Crow was grateful for the excuse to turn his attention away as he faced her.

“I think I’m as ready as I’m likely to get.” He murmured.

“As am I.” Gem answered only a second after.

Though he tried to be more subtle as he looked at the girl, Crow couldn’t help but stare. There seemed an undeniable energy animating Gem, sending miniature spasms through her body, quivering just millimeters under her skin.

He couldn’t tell whether it was from excitement, fear or regret. Looking back on the task she’d last entered so confidently, he wasn’t even sure which would be worst.

“We don’t need to be ready for hours, still.” Unity said lazily. “If none of you think you can get any more so than you already are, it doesn’t bode well.”

Crow caught the playful smile as it flashed across the boy’s mouth, but a quick glance at the suddenly scowling Gem told him that not everyone else had.

“Hold on.” The silver-haired girl began, frowning. “What did you mean when you said our food was fresh from the kitchens apparently?”

The question was directed at Astra, but Crow saw the suspicious glances she shot at Unity from the corner of her eye.

“Unity got it.” Astra said, stiffly.

That snapped Gem’s head around to stare at the boy, who grinned in the face of her sharp movement.

“And I suppose you did it out of the kindness of your heart?” She barked, pale blue eyes seeming to demand and extort an answer all on their own.

“I didn’t piss on your bacon, if that’s what you’re wondering.” He answered, somewhat defensively.

“We have a task, one which I’m going to be in as well, and I figured I’d be less likely to die if my teammates had a decent meal to focus them first.”

If that mitigated the storm slightly, it didn’t banish it.

“How exactly did you get this, then? I know full well the staff in the kitchens have been too busy to make full breakfasts for the contestants.”

Lids narrowed around the stern ice of her glare.

“You didn’t steal from the shelters outside, did you?”

“Of course not!” Unity snapped, face suddenly hot, mouth half agape with shock and indignation. “Eclipse, what do you all think of me? No, I got them from the kitchens as I said.”

“How?” Astra cut in, suddenly every bit as intense as Gem.

Unity’s mouth worked silently for a few seconds, his body trembling as if lifting a great weight, or holding a wild dog back by its leash. Finally, almost defeatedly, he answered with a sigh.

“They’re still making bacon for the organisers.”

Crow almost burst out laughing at the look on Astra’s face, scandalised as though she’d just walked in on a noble consummating his marriage. His amusement died as the implications of Unity’s words sunk in.

He’d just eaten the breakfast of someone who had the power to disqualify his entire team. Worse, someone who was very likely an Immortal at that.

“You fucking idiot.” Gem breathed.

Unity simply rolled his eyes.

“Oh relax, they aren’t going to go out of their way to abuse their authority and punish us over a side of bacon.”

“And what makes you so sure?” She asked, face practically contorting with fury.

He met her glare with a grin.

“Because I’ve done this enough to know which slights they consider worth pursuing.”

Just when it looked like Gem was rearing up to continue the argument, Xeno’s voice cut in.

“I think we’re getting off track, here. We have three hours, but that doesn’t mean we should waste any time arguing.”

“Shut up.” Unity snapped, then turned back to Gem. “Now, are you aware that your mother-”

“She’s right.” Astra interrupted, voice heavy and sharp to bisect Unity’s words.

“Then what are we going to be discussing, exactly? All of us already know our roles, Warper’s already turned craven, what else is there to do?”

“You forgot about Crow.” Xeno said, voice cool and steady. Unity stared at her, frowning in confusion. After a moment, however, his eyes widened.

“Oh.” He murmured. “Right.”

“What about me?” Crow asked, suddenly feeling self conscious. His discomfort only grew as Xeno and Unity glanced at one another, seeming to silently communicate right before him.

“Well,” Xeno said at last, “we know that you’re determined to take part in all of the remaining tasks. And we don’t want you to get hurt, so we thought of a way to… safeguard you.”

While she’d been speaking, making Crow progressively more ready for an argument with where he was sure her words were going, Unity had hurriedly strode towards his own room. He emerged as she finished, holding a bundle of dark fabric.

Gem gasped, and Crow turned to see her staring at the material with recognition.

“Is that…”

“It is.” Unity answered with a smirk. “Your armour from the first task. What’s left of it, at least. Turns out it was fairly damaged, and we ended up having to cut it off you because of your broken ribs, but the scraps are still as strong as ever.”

Reaching the living room, he laid the bundle out over one of the tables. Crow immediately recognised the shape of a tunic.

“It took us a full day to sew it all together.” Xeno said, proudly.

“Mainly because we’re both weak as shit, and it took her two hours to shape her weird magic light into needles hard enough to actually work with it.” Unity added, eliciting a scowl from Xeno.

Crow barely noticed her glare at the boy, his focus was taken by the armour lying before him.

His armour? Of course not.

“Well?”

He turned to Unity, seeing the boy’s eyebrow arched at him.

“Aren’t you going to try it on? I want to see if the fae bursts a vein when it doesn’t fit.”

Lifting it carefully from the table, aware even as he did so that treating armoured clothing so gently was beyond pointless, Crow hurriedly began to slip it on. Pausing only to quickly make certain that it was meant to go over his clothing.

Once he was wearing it, he found himself unsure of what to do.

“Have a walk.” Astra suggested, seeming almost chirpy in the absence of a tension Crow hadn’t even noticed in her. “See how it moves rather than just how it fits.”

He did just that, and found that the material, if tight around certain parts, was plenty flexible.

“We didn’t have enough material to cover that much, but the armour protects your shoulders, chest, back and thighs.” Unity explained.

“Plus a few other areas. You can see the vulnerable points if you look carefully, they’re still black, to make them less of an obvious target, but the cloth we used for them has a different texture.”

Looking down at himself, Crow could just make out the patches he spoke of. Areas where the leathery, rubbery, unyielding toughness gave way to softer, flowing patches. Like partially melted iron ore, liquid spliced with floating, solidified clumps.

“It’s incredible.” He breathed. “I don’t know what to say.”

Xeno beamed, her smile touching some spot in his chest and filling it with warmth.

“I’m glad you like it!” She grinned.

Unity smiled, too. Though he was far more reserved, with the mischievous edge that seemed to catch all his expressions.

“Don’t just thank us, we couldn’t have done it if the Gemini hadn’t supplied us with the material by getting her ass-”

A pillow struck him in the side of the head, cutting off his words and sending him stepping to one side. Shocked, the boy turned to the source. Gem met his eye coolly, unapologetic.

“Are there any other things that need discussing?” She asked, directing her question at the room around her as a whole.

Astra was the first to answer, and Crow imagined her tongue was hastened by the awkward tension between her teammates.

“I think we all need to address something. There’s no guarantee that we’ll all get to fight who we intend to, everyone realises this, right?”

Crow saw the mood drop almost as soon as she said it. Ruined so completely, it could only have been by the truth. Astra continued.

“We’re planning for Ra to fight Gem, but he could just as easily go up against Crow, or Unity. Or the task might be structured in such a way as to let them attack us all at once, one at a time.”

It had been a point of contention that their information on the task was so poor. Without another team to go first this time around, they had no way of predicting what they’d be going up against. Which meant that there was no chance to really strategise beforehand.

Granted, the enemy couldn’t either. But somehow that was of little consolation.

“Why are you bothering to bring up the fact that something might fuck us over regardless of what we do?” Gem growled.

“Because we can’t get complacent.” Astra answered, curtly. “We can’t go in expecting to simply pit ourselves against the enemy, for all we know it’ll be an uphill, even impossible, battle. And all because of poor luck.”

“We already know that.”

There was an edge fo Gem’s voice that Crow had neither expected, nor seen before. Something deep and sharp, a barb coming from a place hidden far out of sight.

Astra looked like she’d say more, however just as her mouth opened, she faltered. She seemed to wither under Gem’s gaze, turning away from the girl and mumbling more than speaking her answer.

“Alright then. Just wanted to be sure.”

“Well now you are.”

The room fell into silence, as though the hostile air between Gem and Astra had solidified in the throats of everyone else.

“I think I’ll go for a jog.” Astra said at last. “It would be good to warm up before the task.”

She didn’t wait to hear anyone’s input before taking her leave, and with her went the cloud of crushing pressure that seemed to have rendered them all mute.

After that, even with Astra and Gem no longer able to clash, the mood lightened considerably.

Gem forced Unity to swear on his testicles that he hadn’t lied about the origins or treatment of their food, then cheerfully informed him that she would take them as forfeit if she found out he had.

Two hours passed with no further incidents. No more of them left, though Crow felt the urge to do so, and as they counted the passing seconds, the nigh-intolerable anxiety that had been maturing in his gut began to give way. Purged by his friends’ company.

Then again, the fact that he was wearing magically augmented armour which could, if Xeno were correct, stop a musket was likely a contributor to his sense of surety.

An hour before their task was due to begin, Gem came to sit beside Crow and spoke to him in a hushed tone.

“So, before we go to our task, are you planning on telling me why you’ve been staring at me so strangely since last night?”

Her question drew a stunned, stupid stare from Crow. Which, upon his realising it may well have been the exact look she was complaining about, quickly relocated to the carpeted floor.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He tried, pointlessly.

“Yes you do.” She answered. “And if you want to talk to me again, you’ll tell me what it is.”

The severity, or perhaps urgency, in the girl’s tone surprised Crow, and it took little consideration for him to decide complying was best.

“Someone offered me a… sponsorship, I think. And I was looking at you, wondering whether I should ask your advice or whether you’d be insulted if I made it look like I was assuming you knew things you didn’t.”

“And you thought staring at me as though I were plotting your death would be better?”

“The idea was that you’d be so used to everyone staring at you that you wouldn’t notice one more.”

A smile touched her face, and Crow felt as though she’d reached into his chest and grabbed his heart.

“That wasn’t a bad compliment.”

Crow hadn’t been trying to compliment her, merely point out her ludicrous fame. However he’d learned from his last attempt to talk to her about anything serious that by far the best strategy he could employ was to remain silent.

And so he did.

“A sponsor, though... “ Gem mused. “Who offered it?”

“He said his name was Sorafin, and-”

“Elijah Sorafin?!” She barked, making him jump with the sudden change in tone. “Eclipse, Crow, why didn’t you tell me the instant you were approached by one of the Jaxif Faction’s most prominent members?”

Just when Crow began to answer, she spoke again.

“Think very, very carefully before telling me it’s because you were scared I’d be angry for some reason.”

Crow thought, and reached a conclusion.

“When do you think Astra will be back?” He asked, dodging with all the grace of a drunken ox.

As clumsy as it was, Gem seemed to find the endeavour amusing- at least judging by the playful smile dancing on her face.

“I doubt she’ll be any more than ten or so minutes, she’s the type to more than meet her time limit.”

Gem was soon proven right when Astra returned. Her blonde hair was matted slightly with sweat, betraying a far more strenuous work-out than the simple jog she’d claimed to go out for.

Even with the pink flush of her face and heaving of her shoulders, however, she seemed to have regained far more energy than she’d expended.

“Are we all ready?” She asked, panting slightly even as she stepped into the room.

She didn’t wait for an answer before beginning towards her room.

“We’ve been ready for an hour.” Unity grunted. “And bored for almost as long.”

“Oh you poor thing, I can’t imagine what it must be like to not have anything to do but wait in the same room for a few hours. Truly, it shakes my faith that there’s justice in the world.”

Xeno snickered as Unity mumbled an angry retort, and Astra disappeared behind her door. Five minutes after Astra emerged, they set off for the stadium.