That landed. I watched the implications process across twenty faces at different speeds. The Hero team couldn’t go in with overwhelming force because collateral damage might destroy the hostage. The Villain team couldn’t use the hostage as a shield or set traps near it because their own Aspects could trigger the trauma sensors. The hostage wasn’t just an objective. It was a shared constraint that punished recklessness from both sides equally.

It was, in fact, the perfect test of exactly what Mercy had spent the morning teaching us about accountability.

Camille spoke up from my left. "What counts as heavy damage? Is there a threshold?"

Radiant nodded. "If three or more of the hostage’s trauma sensors go red simultaneously, that’s a critical threshold. Both teams fail. No exceptions. No appeals." His jaw set in a way that made clear this was not negotiable. "A Hero who destroys the thing they’re trying to save is NOT a Hero. And a Villain who destroys their own leverage has already lost."

The afternoon sun sat lower in the sky now and the shadows from Ground Beta’s buildings stretched across the concrete toward us. The hologram continued its rotation, casting faint blue light across Radiant’s costume as the fake building revealed its rooms and corridors and the small glowing figure of the hostage sitting in its chair on the second floor.

"Teams." Radiant collapsed the hologram with a tap and reached behind his back with one massive hand, producing a cloth bag that looked absurdly small against his frame. "The teams will be decided by..."

He shook the bag. Something rattled inside.

"DRAWING LOTS!"

Caden’s groan was audible from six feet away. "Random? Seriously? What happened to tactical squad composition and complementary Aspect pairing?"

"Random is HOW THE REAL WORLD WORKS!" Radiant held the bag aloft with the enthusiasm of a game show host who happened to be capable of punching through tectonic plates. "A Hero doesn’t get to choose who stands next to them when the building goes down! You work with whoever is THERE! You adapt! You communicate! You TRUST!"

He extended the bag toward the nearest student.

"Each lot has a number and a designation. H for Hero. V for Villain. Matching numbers are teammates. H-1 and H-1 are a Hero team. V-1 and V-1 are a Villain team. H-1 fights V-1. Simple!"

"Simple," Marco repeated flatly.

"SIMPLE!" Radiant confirmed with zero acknowledgment of sarcasm.

The bag reached Camille first. She reached in without hesitation and withdrew a small metal disc, examined it, and held it up.

"V-3."

Her smile was the kind of thing that suggested the Villain designation suited her just fine.

The bag moved down the line. Theo drew H-2. Caden pulled V-1 and immediately began performing an exaggerated villain monologue about his plans for world domination, which Marco interrupted by drawing V-1 and high-fiving him with enough force to make Caden wince. Felicity drew H-4 and pressed the disc against her cheek like a good luck charm. Nyx drew V-5 with an expression that communicated she had been born for villainy and had merely been waiting for institutional permission to pursue it.

Percy drew H-3 and showed me the disc with wide eyes. Rina drew H-5 and clutched the disc with both hands.

The bag reached me.

I put my hand inside. The remaining discs rattled against my gloved fingers, cool metal against reinforced fabric. My hundred-point Intelligence processed the remaining probability distribution in the time it took to close my hand around a disc and withdraw it.

I opened my palm.

H-3.

Percy’s face split into the widest smile I had ever seen on him. It lasted approximately one point four seconds before he caught himself and restored his usual expression of focused neutrality, but the damage was done. Percy Mendoza was happy and I had witnessed it and neither of us could take that back.

I was on the Hero team. With Percy. The kid who mapped building exits and calculated route efficiency and possessed an Aspect that could analyze opponent weaknesses in real time but froze when deadlines arrived.

And somewhere in the remaining pile of lots, someone had just drawn V-3, which meant they were the Villain team that would face whoever drew H-3.

Which was us.

The bag continued its journey. Hiro pulled his disc and his gold eyes brightened, then dimmed, then brightened again as he processed the implications of whatever designation he’d received. Maribelle drew her lot and compared it with Eden beside her. Petra reached into the bag with two fingers, withdrew her disc without looking at it, and placed it in her blazer pocket as though the result was beneath her attention.

Radiant waited until every disc had been claimed, then clapped his hands together one final time.

"Now then! First matchup begins in TEN MINUTES! Hero team H-1 and Villain team V-1, you’re UP! Everyone else, observation deck through the east corridor! You’ll watch your classmates’ engagements on the monitoring system before your own turn comes!"

The group fragmented into pairs as students found their matching numbers and began the immediate, chaotic process of planning with someone they may or may not have spoken to before today.

Percy appeared at my shoulder with the reliability of someone who had been calculating optimal positioning for this exact moment since the disc landed in his hand.

"Lukas." His voice was steady in a way it hadn’t been all day. "I have the floor plan memorized from the holographic display. Seven rooms on the first floor, five on the second, three on the third. Two stairwells, one elevator shaft that appears non-functional, and a maintenance corridor on the ground floor that connects to the rear of the building."

I looked at Percy. He looked at me. His navy blue hair fell across his forehead and his dark eyes held the particular brightness of someone who had just been told he could use his brain in a combat scenario rather than his below-average physical stats.

"Percy."

"Yes?"

"Who are we fighting?"

He checked his disc again, then scanned the crowd for whoever held V-3.

His face changed.

I followed his gaze across the group to where Camille Ortega stood with her arms crossed and her orange Rivet constructs already flickering at her fingertips, examining her own matching teammate.

Petra Lang stood beside her, emerald eyes gleaming, the disc in her manicured fingers reading V-3.

Camille and Petra. The girl who never missed and the girl who could create anything.

Percy swallowed.

"We should plan," he said.