It had been dark for over an hour, but Codi still sat outside alone, slumped in one of the spectators’ seats. She glared at the arena, probing a loose tooth with her tongue and cursing everything and everyone. Fidgeting with the hem of her hoody, she had nothing left except her own unbridled fury.

It wasn’t Vasco she was angry with, or Barrow, or her team-mates, or even the other fighters from off-world. It was the feeling of utter impotence and uselessness the day had stamped on her. For a few brief weeks she felt like she’d been achieving something and one afternoon had wiped that feeling out like a man swatting a fly. Scowling, she kicked the seat in front of her, extracting a thwack that echoed across the empty arena. Four fights and four utter blow-outs were all she had to show for the hard work.

So what now? She’d always known that Brax-Delta would be the underdogs in The Gauntlet, but now there didn’t seem like much point in turning up. They’d go, get the crap kicked out of them and head home again, tails between their legs. There was a line between a plucky underdog and a waste of space. Maybe next year, or the year after that would be different. She was only seventeen, still green by Gauntlet standards. Maybe it was like this for every newbie. Your first year you learned the hard way just how much of an uphill climb things were going to be.

As she tried to console herself with that train of thought she almost didn’t notice the gangly figure making his way along the stands until he sat down beside her. She turned her black look on him, but he was too busy staring skywards to register it.

“Hell of a day, eh?” Max muttered. “One minute we’re all happy, guns blazing then bang-,” he clapped his hands together, - “reality check.”

“What do you want, Max?” she grated, looking back to the arena.

“Nothing, just thought you might want some company.”

“Well think again. I’m happy enough by myself.”

“C’mon now-,”

“I’m fine. Just leave me alone.”

Now he frowned. “Codi, what is it about people you hate so much?”

“Don’t you dare start thinking you know a damned thing about me!” she snarled. “I’m part of your Gauntlet team, that’s it. You don’t know me, you don’t need to know me. I don’t need a shoulder to cry on or a sympathetic ear, believe me, I’ve had just about as many of those as I can bear. Everywhere I go, ‘I understand what you’re going through’ – ‘oh, you can talk to me if you need to’ – I’ve heard all that garbage before. That’s not what I need. It’s not what any of us need.”

“Alright,” he replied, a hardness creeping into his voice. “What do we need then, in your expert opinion?”

“How the hell should I know?” She kicked the chair in front of her again in lieu of kicking him. “Ask Vasco, our great and powerful leader.”

“You know that’s not fair.”

“Look, all we accomplished today was finding out how totally screwed we are when the time comes for the real show.” Codi pinched the bridge of her nose. “None of us are ready for the Gauntlet, Max. You want to know what I think we need? We need more time to get ready and we just don’t have it.”

“It’s not as bad as that,” he said, his tone softening again. “So we lost in a friendly, but what was the last thing Vasco told you before this thing started.”

She stayed silent.

“He said: learn as you go,” Max continued, undeterred. “I don’t know about you, but I was starting to get the hang of it by my last fight. I still lost but so what? This isn’t the Gauntlet, it was a glorified practice session with a bunch of really dangerous sparring dummies.”

Codi’s scowl deepened but she started to process Max’s words. Truth be told she hadn’t really thought about anything that might have been gained from the drubbing they took. He seemed to think he’d improved. Had she done that? Amid the blur of punches, kicks, throws and tackles in her mind it was difficult to say. Her jaw still ached from her first bout; the third nearly cost her a broken arm. By the final fight of her day she’d just wanted the whole torrid business to be over with. In the end she came to the same conclusion.

“Even if you’re right,” she said slowly. “We still don’t have the time to make good on that.”

“You’re so sure about that?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

“You’d rather not give it a go? You know, whether we get any better or not we’re still going to have to go the Gauntlet. We signed those contracts so we’re in now. I don’t know about you but I’d rather try and maximise my chances of giving the audience something they’re not expecting.”

Letting her head rock back, Codi started at the stars twinkling intermittently through the sheen of cloud cover. She’d given up on a lot of things in her life; school, friends, teachers, sports. Could she just give up on this too? Then she thought of Jacob Barrow, the man who’d put her in this place. A chance to sort your life out, he’d said, before you screw it up for good.

Jaw tight, she stood up. “Well in that case we’re going to have to work a lot harder.” Max stood as well. Meeting her gaze, he nodded once. Codi rolled her eyes. “Oh, damn it all, let’s get everybody together then. We need to talk.”

They made their way back into the illuminated halls of the academy. It was almost ten o’clock but Codi doubted Vasco would be enforcing his curfew too vigorously after the day’s events. When the tournament ended he’d said nothing, simply allowing them to have the rest of the day off.

They found the twins sitting playing chess in the canteen. The bruising friendly seemed to have dented even their cheerful demeanour as they sat deep in thought over the game. After convincing them to abandon chess in favour of a more useful endeavour, the four of them journeyed to Lita’s room. They all exchanged looks.

“This was your idea,” Lucas said, inclining his head to the locked door.

Codi sighed. “Fine, fine.” She raised her hand and knocked half a dozen times, just to make sure their companion wasn’t sleeping. A banging sound emanated from within then a few seconds later the door opened just enough to let her see Lita’s tear-stained face.

“What?” she demanded, her voice hoarse and shaking.

Codi recoiled in surprise. “Sorry, I…we…” She shook her head. “Lita, are you alright?”

“Of course I’m not alright,” the other girl yelled. “Everything we were working towards just got flushed down the drain today. Now what do the four of you want?!”

“Lita.” Max raised his hands defensively. “We were on our way to have a talk with Vasco.”

“About what?”

“About us giving ourselves half a chance in the Gauntlet. It would be better if we were all there.”

Lita sniffed heavily and stepped out of her room, slamming the door shut behind her. “For all the use this is going to be.”

As the group walked towards the elevator Codi couldn’t suppress the surprise she felt at seeing Lita in such a state. During training her companion had always been the most brash, headstrong of all of them. Did the Gauntlet mean this much to her? Codi had been angry, but tears were never close. Then again, she didn’t cry often. Life had made certain of that.

They bundled into the lift in resigned silence. Codi had no idea what she was going to say to Vasco when they reached his office, but really what could she say? Best to just tell it like it is, she thought.

She knocked on the door of Vasco’s office and waited patiently. A moment later his gruff old voice sounded from within.

“Alright, you lot, get in here.”

“How does he know?” Lazlo murmured.

“C’mon, I’ve been waiting half the night for you all to strap up the guts to come talk to me.”

Glancing at the others, Codi shrugged and shoved the door open. Vasco sat behind his desk facing away from the door, his attention instead rooted on the tele-screen built into the left hand wall. When she realised what was on it, her eyebrows shot up in surprise.

“That’s me!”

Vasco grinned and beckoned them inside. “Indeed it is. C’mon now, we need to salvage something from today’s debacle. The whole tournament was recorded just for us.”

Once everyone made it inside, Vasco’s office became very crowded. They huddled together and stared at the recording of the tournament as he continued talking.

“You see, with the time we had to train we were never going to be ready for the Gauntlet straight away,” he explained. “So this friendly was more to test the water more than anything. And I don’t think anyone can say I wasn’t right in my estimate. That being the case, these recordings are our ticket into being ready in time for the Mayhems.”

He flicked a button on his remote and the recording skipped back to the start. Codi watched herself walk out into the arena to face Arvin Lee again and she resisted the urge to close her eyes, knowing exactly what was coming. Then the fight started. She frowned. Watching herself block and tangle with the hulking boy, the recording looked a lot better than it had felt at the time.

Almost as if reading her mind, Vasco nodded knowingly. “You probably thought you made a right mess of that fight, and I suppose you did in some respects, but just look. The stance is good, the blocks are smooth and well placed. You just had two problems to start with. First, you were nervous. I saw it the second you looked that kid in the eye, and why wouldn’t you be? This was your first ever competitive fight using full Gauntlet equipment. Second, you were concentrating too much on what you were doing. That’s why you never saw his shoulder barge coming.”

He paused the recording and looked at them. “You were all the same. It was a learning curve out there. Every time you took a hit, every time you hit the ground, it was all building you up to not let the same thing happen again in future. Max, you only lost your last bout on an impact rating. That’s as close as these things can get.”

At that moment there came a knock on the door. Vasco raised an eyebrow. “Come.”

“Dad,” Holly said, poking her perfect face around the doorframe. “The academy administrators are on the phone for you.”

“Can it wait? I’m busy.”

She bit her lip. “It’s about the tournament. They don’t sound like they’re going to take no for an answer right now.”