The first night of Scotty's arrival, the three banes all went out into the woods near camp at his suggestion. That was unusual for him, but it was a good chance to practice their teamwork and kick off the trip without needing to completely hide their actual talents.

  The area had been Marked by him years ago on a different mission, and he added layers to it each time travel took him through this area. Using that pre-established area of control, the three of them put in a night of practice.

  Obviously, Wade held himself back. He stood with his back against a massive stone ledge and sent his awareness out wide to pull in dangerous cryptos.

  Scotty and Jasque did most of the work. Again, both of them held back too. Especially since they had non-reusable equipment that was a large part of their usual strategy.

  Scotty had a full kit on, including body armor and a special selection of firearms. Though he had emergency close-quarters tools, it was unlikely they would be needed. He stood slightly off to the side from Wade.

  Jasque never held still. He summoned different weapons and switched between forming a killing field where he and Scotties lanes of fire overlapped, to stepping forward into melee when a tougher creature made contact.

  Wade's job was to control the battlefield and address the largest threats while his two guards thinned the herd.

  Most of the things they were fighting were from a special kind of fungus crypto. He shooed off the regular animals and got a few other non-fungal monsters, but the mycelia menace was the majority of the night's guests. It seemed to spawn in this area on a semi-predictable schedule. No one knew the exact conditions that made it manifest, but there was enough of a cadence that the local forces knew when to check for a new occurrence.

  This one had gotten far enough along to be a nuisance to the populace. The threat had a strange collective consciousness and could form imitations of things that it had helped decay. Those became drones that, during their brief life span, would try to help the subterranean mycelium network grow into something profoundly dangerous.

  Left unchecked, the surface around the sprawling roots would become a tide of danger, with waves of attackers posing serious threats. Even if towns fought against the mushrooms at the outbreak's center, they usually didn't realize the mushrooms were just the fruiting body of a much larger, hard-to-root-out network. It constituted a danger that would make a brand new ghost town in the best case, and form a regional threat in the worst.

  Or, more accurately, it could have done all of that if Wade hadn't had some free time to kill.

  He burned out almost the entire underground superstructure in perhaps three minutes. Then he went about gathering all the semi-autonomous drones and a few other local 'kill on sight' cryptos in front of their little team.

  In his earlier years, it would be hard to tell this stretch of woods apart from Forsythe. Maybe the rocks, hills, and minor change in leafy versus pine needle-y trees would have tipped him off. But he wouldn't have bet on it.

  Now the difference was night and day. So stark it made him feel out of place in an ecosystem whose rhythms he hadn't been riding for years. The slope of the terrain, plants he had learned to identify, bird nests that weren't near him, and even the taste of the water. All of it felt different. And none of it should have been distracting him in the middle of a culling. Fortunately, this was a very boring battle.

  He stood with his arms crossed and a somewhat stern frown on his face as he plucked at the magic he had sunk into the world around them. Scotty fired with a slow and measured cadence, clearing his zone, minding communication, and responding to what Jasque and Wade would do before they even went to do it.

  The entire time, the thin man muttered puns under his breath. Which was another sign of how minor an issue this was.

  Jasque's eyes were lidded, and the corner of his mouth lifted in ghastly smiles as he did his bloody work. Occasionally, his expression grew grim, but no more than someone's would during a challenging game of pick-up basketball. He fought robotically. Following all rules and procedures. The slayer calculated his course like an accountant and whirled like a dervish to deal the most damage to the foes of humanity without overstepping a single best practice or piece of training doctrine.

  "Lion!" the dark-haired slayer called out, his rifle turning into a big boar spear.

  He dashed forward into melee. His opponent was a big cat, possibly a mountain lion, with unhealthy coloring and mildewy fur, indicating its infestation.

  Their fussy friend called an affirmative, and bullets splattered all the false, mushroom-simulation squirrels that would have leapt at him from the tree tops. He had already predicted his battle buddies' route and cleared out the small swarming creatures that would have otherwise slowed the slayer.

  It made Wade shake his head in appreciation. Scotty was thinking so many steps ahead that he had already taken control of every area where Jasque would eventually step. Not only that, he had done it so seamlessly and so far in advance of Jasque's actual location that there was no risk of friendly fire.

  Jasque flowed forward, following no form or single martial tradition. He sensed everything around him and moved like water. Whatever space was free of injury, he filled. Whatever slope led him to his target, he cascaded down, occasionally hitting against a rock and splashing up a spray of red before reforming his momentum and continuing his path.

  It was soulless and beautiful. Deers with mushroom horns fell with a quarter of their body cut off. A pack of mold imitating wolves collapsed as he passed through them. Jasque always did exactly the amount of damage that was easiest, safest, and would cross the threshold into his victim's neutralization. Though unpressured as they were, he had the freedom to add a little extra to his attacks. Just to make sure death would come even if they all packed up and walked away.

  Blood-hive stags—wicked cryptos that lived inside the hollowed pelt of a deer, grew bee stingers on their long departed host's antlers, and cocooned semi-conscious prey beasts in hives made of bloody deer-horn felt—fell behind Jasque with blinded eyes and savage gut wounds.

  Wade quietly gave them a humane end, but didn't otherwise interfere. This training session was more for Jasque and Scotty. They needed to practice applying the rules their little squad operated under when fighting as a team. Especially with multiple opponents, when numbers and complex variables made following those rules hard.

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  In a real battle, he would be working on killing something uniquely tough or protecting someone of high value. At the same time, those two kept his immediate vicinity safe.

  Twice, they attracted big threats that would, theoretically, have been his responsibility to handle. The first was just a bear. He left that alone after redirecting it into the forest behind him.

  However, he did identify a dangerous tree creature who seemed unconcerned by the mushroom drones. Early wounds showed that the crypto had some strange regenerative qualities. When his guards couldn't handle it (while staying within the handicaps of the exercise), they followed the correct procedure and escalated the threat to him.

  He quickly killed with heat and went back to waiting for his turn again.

  For all that this was a ravening murder-fest of monster death, it was rather dull. They could have set him up with a folding chair and a beer, and he still would have cleared the whole forest by morning. Though if they weren't drilling as a team, Jasque probably would have made him kill everything while running, so they would improve his cardio while they were at it.

  Thankfully, it didn't last too long. They reached the end of the local threats and circled up for feedback once he confirmed the coast was clear.

  Jasque started speaking, "That was adequate, but Wade, I didn't see you checking zones as we moved."

  He only nodded, but Scotty interrupted, "Why would you see it? He can sense the zones better than any eyes could see."

  "Point and announce is procedure. Also, Scotty, you wasted time lining up head shots; you could increase your efficiency by going for crippling injuries and leaving the neutralized creatures to exsanguinate."

  "I would in combat, but I had enough leeway to give them clean deaths."

  The slayer frowned, "Practice like you fight."

  "No, practice how you want to perform. I don't want to perform optional cruelty."

  "Jasque," Wade interrupted, his stomach doing an uncomfortable little twist at the slowly budding conflict. "I noticed a moment where you didn't go after the rabbit thing. Was that because of the tree cover?"

  The team's slayer glanced away from Scotty and towards him with no expression on his face. He examined Wade closely, for all the world looking like a fisherman doing the mental math to guess how much his catch weighed.

  "Yes," he said after a laden pause. "That tree had a dead limb, and I didn't want to fight under something that could fall like that."

  "I thought so. Does that mean—?" he asked a few more questions, pointed out his own errors, how to correct a couple mistakes, and managed to keep things civil.

  It was a decent debrief. Nothing groundbreaking. But, as Jasque would say, the debrief was part of it and needed to be practiced, too.

  "Welp," Scotty finally said. "It's getting late, and I need to be up early tomorrow to start working with Shilloh. I'm calling it."

  That was weird. This had been unusually fast. They had lucked out on finding a location. Wade almost asked why his friend had asked them to do this exercise if he had plans that required him to turn in so early, but never got the chance.

  "You're training the dryad?" Jasque asked, his head tilting like a curious bird.

  "Yeah. I'll help her do some workouts and get a measure of her skills. Once we get on site, I figure Thresher will want to know."

  "Yes. Good thinking. She has expressed interest in The Book of the Five Rings. That may be an avenue of conversation to help build rapport."

  His best friend's face briefly flickered with distaste. "Thanks for the tip, but she and I get along pretty well."

  Wade was probably the only person who knew his bodyguard well enough to spot the small flicker of disapproval in Jasque's body language.

  Wade didn't say anything, though. He let the two do their own thing.

  "That's good, I suppose. Though the book of Five Rings can cultivate tactical thinking while also building rapport," Jasque said. "Shilloh is supposed to be a person who has significant potential. Getting her recruited, competent, and indoctrinated with our mission is important."

  "Yup."

  "Unfortunately, she developed a bad image of us. The situation she met us in was unpleasant from her point of view. I appreciate you working on the asset conversion."

  Scotty, who had been fussing with his weapons and making sure everything sat right, glanced at Wade.

  Bad image may have been a tiny understatement. They had to lie to her for several days, and they drugged an isolated woman because she saw too much. But he desperately wanted to extend the time the two got along for as long as possible.

  The desperation must have shown in his eyes.

  "Yeah," the skinny man sighed, not calling out the downplaying of a kidnapping. "I can see how that might happen. Anyway, Wade, let's head back before we miss any more sleep."

  "I'd love to, but I have a few things left to do."

  "At ass o'clock at night?"

  He tried very hard not to look at his bodyguard and shrugged, "I'm not driving. It'll be fine."

  "You sure?"

  "Yeah, Jasque will stay here to watch me."

  Hesitantly, his friend agreed and made his goodbyes. In short order, the skinny-looking man was on the route back to where he had pitched his tent.

  "You should put more effort into correcting him," Jasque said, his voice a calm laceration through the chill night air.

  Wade disagreed for several reasons. But he voiced the only one that he knew Jasque would approve of. "That's a job for smart men and persuasive people."

  "True," his minder nodded. "But he supports mask and mission just like us. His growth is the growth of humanity's safety."

  There were so many things he wanted to say. In the end, he just grunted. No reason to stir the pot while there was still a long night of sparring and training with Jasque.

  Not that he would get abused for sharing his opinion. The other man was always fair, always reliable. Far more fair than Wade. That's why Wade had him as a minder keeping him on the straight and narrow.

  Unfortunately, sparring after an argument made it easier for his tired brain to make him feel like the other man was trying to hurt him or punish him.

  Better not to give himself an excuse for resentment. He needed Jasque and should just be grateful for the time and training.

  "You're right, Jasque. I'll try to bring it up tomorrow."

  Then came the same dead-eyed evaluation. The familiar moment where he wondered when he had stopped being frightened by the possibility that his executioner could see mental degradation and decide to take action this time.

  He sat through the look, death's proximity no more startling than a dangerous machine's would be to a veteran assembly line worker.

  "Thank you, Wade. I would appreciate that," Jasque clasped his shoulder and gave him a big smile. "I know I was a little hard on you during that review, but it was just to keep things even with Scotty. We train more than him, and I didn't want him to feel singled out. You're actually avoiding skill regression well enough that I don't think we need to bring the healer in for serious remedial training."

  Wade's pulse jumped even at the thought. But Jasque just kept speaking.

  "Still, let's keep putting in the work so we don't get there at all this trip, okay?"

  Wade swallowed. His best friend wasn't the only one who wanted to sleep and wake up sharp the next morning. But, he reminded himself, he wasn't here for his mind. The world would not be deprived if he took a butter knife from his drawer and made it a little duller.

  His magic would stay strong. And it's not like he had slept well for most of the last few months anyway.

  "Okay, Jasque. Let's get after it."

  "Atta boy," his minder said, ruffling his hair even as a sword made of painfully thick, but non-lethal plastic materialized in his other hand.

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