Jin and I walked into the mess hall side by side. Every table in the hall had turned into a scene of bickering. Datapads passing between recruits, replays of paired matches cycling on screens, a kid on his feet demonstrating a guard position to two people who clearly thought he was wrong. Three tables down, someone was loudly insisting that Osei's paired coordination should be disqualified for the first phase fights. His opponent in the debate kept stabbing the air with a spoon.
Jin split toward the food line. "Save me a spot at the table, I'll grab our food."
I didn't have the energy to argue and nodded, heading off to the table.
Park had his datapad propped against a water canteen, cycling through match footage. Tomás was three pages deep in his notebook. Ren and Sato sat across from each other, Sato talking and Ren listening. Hsu was flexing her guard hand, working out the stiffness. Andrew was eating paste with a grim look on his face.
Me too, buddy, me too...
"Your left side keeps dragging," Tomás said the moment I sat down.
"Yeah, I took a nasty hit to my ribs. Jin had to wrap them up for me."
Sato's head came up. "She what? Jin? Are you sure we're talking about the same person?"
Jin appeared like a ghost, knocking the back of Sato's head with a gentle elbow.
"What was that for?" Sato cried out in protest.
"I have no idea what you're talking about, Sato," Jin said, placing a tray in front of me.
Sato looked at the tray, looked at Jin, looked at me, and wisely decided to examine his paste very closely.
"Say it," Jin said, sitting down across from Tomás.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"I was going to say that's very considerate of—."
"No, you weren't." Jin interjected.
"No..." Sato agreed. "I wasn't. But now I'm terrified, so let's move on."
Ren made a sound that might have been a laugh.
"Alright," I said. "How'd everyone do today? Give me the full picture."
"You want my spreadsheet?" Park asked.
"Park made a spreadsheet," Hsu said to no one in particular.
"Park always makes a spreadsheet," Andrew said.
"Spreadsheets are useful!" Park protested, pulling it up on a datapad. "I've been tracking approximate levels based on output metrics and the system's performance weighting. Tomás has been helping me big time with it. However, it's just estimations and is not Enlightened truth."
He turned the datapad toward the table. A chart filled the screen: names, estimated levels, stat distributions, deviation classifications.
"Let's start with us. Jin, you're our heaviest hitter. Level 31, D-Grade. Your Agility base sits around 50, which is already in the top bracket for the exhibition. When your burst fires, you jump past 70-ish for three seconds. That's why you can trade with Level 35-plus opponents during your windows and actually come away with something." He glanced at her. "Your Strength sits lower — around 28. You hit fast, and the speed of your attacks adds bite to them, but against someone with high Vitality, you need to stack hits rather than land haymakers."
"I'm aware of how my own body works, Park."
"I'm telling the table, not you."
"Sato, Level 28, D-Grade. Strength is your spike — about 33. That power of yours is real, and the combat skill multiplier on precision strikes pushes your effective output above what 33 Strength should manage. When your angles connect, you hit like someone five levels above you."
"Until some arsehole bends gravity and my punches go into the floor," Sato said.
"Which brings us to the point — at our level range, say Level 22 to Level 32, the stat gaps between fighters are real but manageable. Five to ten points of Agility gives you a fraction of a second. Ten points of Strength means your hits land about a third heavier. At this point in the exhibition, we'll be fighting the heaviest hitters."
"Which means the stats are going to be overwhelming, especially when Miller and the other elites are pushing level forty now." Tomás chimed in.
Park nodded before continuing. "Before we could get by with technique and planning around the rotations, but that will matter less when your perception stat is far outclassed by someone like Jin."
"Why do you keep saying what we already know?" Jin huffed.
"Because refreshing it means you're more likely to take it into account in a fight. It's simple!" Park retorted.
"Don't forget the difference in skill level," Tomás cut in, reorienting the conversation back to the topic at hand.
"Right, yes, of course." Park adjusted his glasses. "The difference in stats is more than just the numbers on your attribute page. As you all know, but seemingly forget, combat skill level plays a huge part in who wins in fights."
"Only if you're fighting with a rotation versus rotation," I chimed in.
"No, not only if you're fighting with a rotation. You might be used to it, Marcus, but the rest of us struggle to keep up with rotations that are higher level than our own."
"Yeah, not all of us got to have the special privilege of a Prep-academy, Tiernan," Jin poked.
I rolled my eyes as Park continued, "A well-executed combination carries more force than the raw Strength stat would suggest — the system recognises the skill and boosts the output. But this also means that they are locked into their rotation, like an attack animation in a video game."
"Is that why Marcus keeps beating people he shouldn't be able to beat?" Andrew asked, jerking his thumb at me.
"Partly," Park said. "Marcus is the interesting case."
"By far the lowest at the table," Tomás added helpfully.
"Dicks..." I grumbled.
"His physical stats are below everyone here. By the numbers, he should be losing to anyone above Level 22 consistently. But his mental stats are seemingly abnormal. Those are higher than most people at Level 30, since lower grades tend to emphasise physical stats."
"So he's got the brain of a Level 30 fighter stuck in a Level 17 body," Sato said.
"That's… actually a decent way to put it," Tomás said, looking almost offended that Sato had summarised his analysis that concisely.
"His reads and his rotationless style compensate for the stat gap," Park continued. "The approach removes the selection step from combat — where a rotation fighter has to perceive, identify the stimulus, select the appropriate counter from their framework, and execute. Marcus gets to plan around what rotation they are using and move fluidly around that."
"Which is something, I hope you have all been working on," Tomás cut in.
"Which is why he can keep up with me in sparring even though I'm fourteen levels above him," Jin said.
"Yup. And his growth rate is…" Park scrolled to another chart. "Unusual. He's gained more levels in the last three weeks than most recruits gain in two months. Even before the exhibition, his progression was faster than a baseline F-Grade. The working theory is that training against opponents who significantly outclass you accelerates the growth curve. Marcus has been sparring against higher-levels since week two."
"The working theory," Tomás said, "is that we've been beating him up for six months and the universe is finally compensating him for it."
"You're welcome," Jin said.
I wanted to push back on the idea that my growth was unusual, but looking at the numbers, Park wasn't wrong. Level 17 after six months, when I'd started at Level 1. The last few days alone had given me more experience than a week of training. The True-Noosphere was eating strife and converting it into progression at a rate that I didn't fully understand, and I didn't love the idea of the table noticing the speed before I'd figured out what was driving it.
"Continuing down the list," Park said. "Hsu, Level 27, D-Grade. Balanced stat spread — nothing spikes, nothing drops. You're the hardest person at this table to exploit because there's no obvious weakness."
"My obvious weakness is that I'm not Jin," Hsu said.
"Nobody's Jin," Sato said. "Jin isn't even Jin during her reset windows."
"I will end you," Jin said, without any particular heat.
"Tomás, Level 26, D-Grade. Intelligence is your ace in the hole, probably mid-thirties, higher than Marcus's. Your predictive modelling is your combat engine. Andrew, Level 23, F-Grade. Your reach and your patience make you effective in pairs, but your raw stats are in the lower bracket."
"I'm aware," Andrew deadpanned.
"And Ren. Level 22, F-Grade. Physical stats are below average across the board, but your Perception is the highest at this table. While not ideal in a straight fight, in squad and paired formats, it's been one of our biggest advantages."
"Environmental awareness," Ren corrected. "My deviation isn't perception. It's sensitivity to physical space."
"Bingo, which is why we relied so heavily on you in the first phase."
"So," Sato said, leaning back and stretching. "Three F-Grades and five D-Grades walk into an exhibition."
"The punchline being that we're all going to get deployed in half a year regardless," Hsu said. The table went quiet for a beat. Hsu shrugged.
She was right. The exhibition felt like everything right now — the culmination of six months of training, the event that would determine firmware assignments and platoon placements, and which sponsors bothered to invest in which recruits. But beyond the exhibition was deployment. Real combat. Mechs. The front lines.
"Let's worry about tomorrow first," I said. "Park, what have you got on our last paired match?"
Park pulled up new footage. "Barracks 6 pair. Pair 2. Both D-Grade, both in the high thirties. Dayo — the tall one — fights using Rotation Four."
He played the clip. Dayo moved through a combination, and Park narrated the biomechanics. "The standard Rotation Four is the most aggressive rotation. Weight forward on the lead foot, the guard carried lower and wider. The power comes from commitment — you step into every strike. The full chain of movement drives it. Plant feet, rotate hips, shoulders follow through, and the fists arrive carrying the full momentum of the body weight behind them."
On screen, Dayo demonstrated exactly that. Lead foot forward, hips driving the rotation, each combination flowing from the ground up with controlled aggression.
"But the trade-off is the recovery," Park continued. "Every committed combination leaves the fighter extended while they pull their weight back to centre. At our level, that recovery window is about half a second — enough for someone with good reads to slip inside and counter. But Dayo has pushed their level particularly high."
The clip showed Dayo finishing a combination and resetting. Shorter extension, tighter hip rotation, and weight returning to their centre faster than the average fighter.
"At his level, with his combat skill amplification, the counter window might be a quarter of a second. Maybe less."
"His partner, Rachel, fights using mostly Rotation Three," Park continued, switching clips. "Defensive framework. High guard tight against the chin, elbows locked over the ribs. Every transition cycles back through that protective shell before launching. You'll rarely catch a Rotation Three fighter exposed, but the cycling slows their output."
The clip showed the stance — compact, stable, guard returning to position after every strike.
"She also has a reactive shielding deviation. Activates on contact. Hit her, and the shield redistributes the impact back at you."
"So she wants to be hit," Jin said. "Every engagement costs us more than it costs her."
"Exactly. Anchor and striker. She absorbs and reflects while Dayo delivers the haymakers."
"All with a combined level advantage of roughly forty points over you two," Tomás said, setting his pencil down.
"Everything we said about the level gap," Tomás continued. "Multiply it. Their combat skill amplification is compounding on stats that are already well above yours. The counter window that Marcus could exploit against Level 25 recruits might not exist against a Level 38."
"My reads will work," I said. "I'll see every opening."
"Probably," Tomás agreed. "The question is whether your body can reach them before they close."
"Well, it's a good thing... Yeah, I got nothing. We'll just have to see when the fight goes."
"Try not to worry your little head too much, Marcus, my burst windows will be the equaliser," Jin said. "During acceleration, I'm beyond their tier."
"Dayo's been timing his pressure to vulnerability window all day," Park said. "He'll learn your burst rhythm. If Rachel can stall you out for long enough, it'll likely end in their win."
"Then I change the rhythm mid-fight."
"You've done that before?" Sato asked.
"No," Jin picked up her water canteen. "But I'll figure it out."
"Famous last words," Sato said.
"I'll put them on your headstone if you keep talking."
"And there it is."
I looked across the mess hall while the table bickered. Miller was three tables away, eating alone. Briggs nearby, but facing outward. Miller's tray barely touched; his usual swagger gone, ever since the Osei loss.
Osei himself sat with Ripley and two network members, reviewing footage with a methodical focus. He caught me looking and gave a fractional nod. I didn't nod back and looked back down at my food and ate.
It still tasted of nothing, but I could swear there was a hint of copper within the mush.