I leapt off the metal, launching myself halfway across the room.

“You have to just use the thrustors or it isn’t fair or fun,” Antonias called. “We both know we could bounce back and forth and in every which direction off the walls with just jumping.”

“Fine!” I called back.

Antonias fired green beams of pain receptor activating energy and I deftly evaded them. I danced through the orange spheres and cylinders that acted as obstacles, letting Antonias’s blasts hit against them impotently. There was no real heat or force to the green beams, they seemed to shine through the membrane of skin to interact with human or humanoid nervous systems. They would not leave a mark on the padded obstacles.

Antonias nailed me in the shoulder, a pinching sensation remaining for a second and I heard him whoop with joy at a successful hit. I dove for the section of the room that I had designated the floor given if the starship’s gravity generators were active in this area and the zero gravity room not shielded from the generators’ influence, that would be down and the roof up.

I dove down because there were less obstacles. The majority of the floating orange shapes were concentrated in the middle of the room, growing less frequently placed the further out you were from the center. Now unblocked, I pushed my air canister powered thrustors to full force, putting my hands behind me. I zoomed across the bottom, my belly almost skimming the white padded floor that was free of the metal gridding that was present on the roof, the three sides facing parts of the ship, and the webbing that was drawn over the viewing glass.

I pulled up where I expected him to be and caught him hovering in the air, idly spinning in a slow rotation as he searched for me.

“Come out, Adrias, don’t tell me you’re afraid.” He said, looking around for me.

“Come out, you say?” I said, speaking upwards to him.

He looked down sharply, but my arm moved first, a whipcrack sound made as I broke the sound barrier. I depressed the silver button on my right handheld thrustor gun and I hit the button three times.

Antonias spun and jetted off to the side with a rush of sprayed gas, swimming through air like it was water and the orange obstacles were seaweed or coral and he himself was a quick moving fish. Even if we didn’t move as fast as we would if we relied on our superhuman muscles to launch ourselves from wall to wall or pull ourselves through the obstacles with our hands, our Bronze reflexes and Imperator skill let us use the tank of gas to its full potential, weaving and threading through the obstacles as fast as if it were a straight line with no obstructions in our way. We turned on a dime and dove and rose quicker than any bird.

Antonias turned and shot me in the cheek and then fired his left handheld thrustor at the last second before he slammed into a cylinder. I shot him in the side and he launched himself upwards. I made a sharp left, went down slightly so I was still in the throng of obstacles but further away from him. I made zigzag moves and circled around again. Antonias was waiting for me as I neared one of the walls, dropping down out of the sky to fire at me and I hit him back with lancing emerald beams.

We played for another twenty minutes before our left controllers beeped and interrupted our fun.

“Gas canister low. Please proceed to exit.” Two robotic voices said, one for each of us.

“Where’s the exit?” Antonias asked me.

“I don’t know.” I said. “Maybe we’re supposed to shove ourselves back up the shoots that took us here?”

“I was kind of taking those for one way, maybe-“ Antonias said.

A hole in the floor was opening, sections of the white padded floor pushed upwards so they were no longer flush with the rest of the surface and then cold metal arms mechanically pushed them to the sides. It left a downward shaft in the floor. Antonias tried to press his triggers on his thrustor guns but they only gave halfhearted spurts of gas.

“I’m all out.” He said.

I tried mine as well though I suspected the result would be the same. A hiss escaped but nothing to propel me any which way.

“I’m out too.” I said.

We floated in the air, too far from the walls to kick off towards the open shaft and too far as well from the orange spheres and cylinders to grab onto and fling ourselves downwards.

“Maybe if I kicked you towards the wall and pushed myself towards the obstacles?” Antonias said.

He tried to push me with his foot but he was too far and he only managed to send himself in a flip.

“You would think that they would alert you about low gas before you actually ran out, right?” Antonias said.

“I think they were expecting most people to get bored first and leave to do other things before they actually depleted an entire tank of gasses.” I said.

“We have only been here like forty minutes, Adrias.” Antonias argued. “The crew should have planned for longer than that. They should have put two tanks in the backpack, there’s certainly room.”

He finally managed to stabilize his spin and floated once more across from me.

“Yeah, but most Servi wouldn’t be expending the tank at full force for most of those forty minutes. If they were just letting off a little amount to change their direction they would get, what, two and half hours? A lot of people would want to get food or go to the bathroom or swimming or something.” I said.

A sound like a bird’s chirp came from Antonias’s wrist communicator. He tapped at it.

“The others wanted to know if we wanted to get dinner.” He said. “It would be the four of us, Junia, and your Servus if you want her to come. I know you treat her-“

“Treat her like what?” I asked.

“Treat her like people.” Antonias said, shrugging.

My good humor and warm feelings from playing beam tag faded away.

“She is people.” I said slowly. “She’s a person just like the rest of us.”

“I meant she’s a servant. I meant she’s not an important person. I know she’s close to you, but the others think its weird that you act like she’s another Imperator sometimes. You talk to her like she’s a friend.” Antonias said.

“She is my friend.” I said. “Just as much as you are my friend, Toni. I don’t care about what Path or Rank you’re on when it comes to me making friendships. I just need to know that person has my back when things get tough and that I’ll have their back if they need me.”

Antonias didn’t say anything.

“Are you my friend, Toni?” I asked.

“Yes.” He said with no hesitation in his voice or deception in his eyes. “Ever since you saved my life at the theater.”

“Then as my friend I want you to understand that I see value in Livia beyond just her being useful for folding my laundry or doing menial tasks for me. That’s her job but it’s not who she is or the entirety of her being. I met her by chance, but I met you by chance as well and I would like to think that we were brought together by the Fates rather just luck. Fabias at the party I beat the living crap out of Cornelias asked me what I would do when I achieved my goal of Gold. He said everyone just ended up doing the same thing of hedonism and excess when they achieved their goals and asked me why I should suffer so long for cultivation when I could party now. I don’t want to indulge in debauchery, but I don’t want to have an empty existence concerned only with perfecting my power.” I said.

“What do you want?” Antonias whispered.

“I want to go as far as I can go, achieve the highest virtue within my reach, but I want to do it with people I care about. I want to walk the road to Olympas Mons with friends. When I initially made the plan to make you and possibly others into Bronzes, I did it out of selfish reasons. I wanted alliances with people I knew so that I was not at a disadvantage when I went to the Scholarium and had to fight with scions of ancient households who already knew each other since childhood.” I said.

“And now?” Antonias said.

“Now I want people with me because I don’t want to be alone on this journey.” I said. “I need you.”

Antonias didn’t speak, there were emotions I couldn’t quite read in his eyes.

“Now I want you to do something for me.” I said. “Before we get the others and go to dinner. Including Livia.”

“What?” He said.

“I want you to say, ‘I, Antonias Calion, am going to become a Gold Imperator.’”

He flinched. “That’s hubris, I can’t say that. I’m not like you, I’m not a hero that steps out of storybooks and tells the universe that it can have it the easy way or the hard way, but you’re going to make the worlds remember your name.”

A hero from a storybook? I did not quite see myself that way. I just liked to think I was ambitious and tried to do the right things.

“Yes, you can. Because we’re going to do it together and we’re stronger than anything the Skyfather or the Fates or the Corpsefather can throw at us.” I said.

Antonias took a deep breath. “I, Antonias Calion, am going to become a Gold Imperator.”

He breathed in and breathed out again, looking warily at the ceiling of the zero gravity room as if the Skyfather was going to conjure up a storm out of nowhere and strike him down.

“And the others?” He asked.

“We’ll bring them along too.” I said.

“Now how do we get down, seriously.” Antonias asked.

I furrowed my brow and then an idea occurred to me. I lifted my thrustor gun to my face.

“Computer… or whoever’s monitoring requests, can we get assistance to help us get down the exit shaft? I said.

“Affirmative.” The robotic voice said.

“There’s two of us.” I added.

“Affirmative.”

A minute later, two drones with whirring propellers and tentacle arms flew up the shaft and came over to us. They grabbed us with their tentacles and brought us down the exit in the floor of the zero gravity room.