Chapter 77 – Motivation

To say that the atmosphere was tense would have been an understatement. Prestige didn’t elect Brophy as their Controller, and the position remained with the now furious Erika. They had endured countless admonishments and reports from the ambushers and Prestige, with recommendations on how they could have worked better as a team.

The following days had been spent in near silence around the camp. Brophy and Sal continued their training out in the woods while Ioseph constructed barriers around their camp much like he had the first week. Rochelle had taken it upon herself to go for walks in the forest to stay away from the campsite whenever Erika was there.

It took a couple of days before Brophy addressed the topic with Sal. They had just completed the fourth run of Sal’s new exercise regimen, that involved darting between the trees, sliding into cover, and taking out ranged targets that Brophy called out at random. It was during a short rest when Sal had sat heavily against a tree that Brophy turned to him with a conflicted expression on his face.

“I wouldn’t be a good choice for Controller.” He raised his hand to stop Sal from interrupting. “I’m an Offense class, and even though I know a lot more than the team, that comes from experience being out in the field. We need to respect the different roles and the advantages they give us. Trust is paramount for success, and I feel like our best chance of having a functional team is with Erika performing well in her role.”

Brophy squatted to sit on his heels as he sighed deeply. “It’s incredibly frustrating. I get that, and I have my own feelings on how Erika uses her powers on others. That doesn’t matter, though. What matters is the task we’ve been assigned. I hope you understand?”

Sal gave him a small nod. He had time to reflect on recent events, and he wasn’t happy at how everything had played out over the last few days. The team was barely talking to one another, and it spelled disaster for their upcoming ambush. He wasn’t sure what Brophy expected from the conversation.

Brophy glanced over in the direction of the campsite hidden beyond the trees in the distance. “I think Prestige’s advice has merit. I can’t even fathom how painful it might be to see such an incredible feat of crafting being dismantled, but it’s the best course of action.” He paused and looked at Sal with a hopeful expression. “Unless you had any other thoughts on how it could be repurposed?”

Brophy was asking about changing the layout of the building, but even though Sal had considered it, he couldn’t figure out a way to make it useful for everyone. They had already lost most of a week on its construction, and he didn’t want to place his bets on it being their salvation. Brophy’s gentle tone and troubled expression showed Sal that he was genuinely remorseful about wanting to tear down the building.

“I don’t think we can salvage it or make it into something radically different in the time we have available. The resources took us too long to gather, and we’d need even more to make something better.” Sal laughed as a thought popped into his head.

“If I was being perfectly honest, I’d love to put Erika in the tower and have her act as bait for the ambushers. They’d absolutely think that she wanted to try again, and we could just pick them off from the outside while they clumped together like last time.”

It was a joke, but Brophy didn’t treat it like one. He stared at Sal. “That’s not a bad idea, actually. I’d be more inclined to rig the place to blow up, but I doubt Erika would be fond of that, seeing as she’d be in the center of the explosion.”

Sal raised a single finger to Brophy as he activated his visor. He was still maintaining his practice each night and the results were nowhere near as good as he needed, but it might be enough. Sal closed his eyes and visualized Erika standing with her arms crossed. He tried to represent her scale realistically before making her materialize with Barry’s illusion ability.

Brophy’s gasp was signal enough that something had happened, and Sal opened his eyes to see a poor depiction of Erika standing haughtily in front of them. It was his first illusion of a human and it showed, as Erika’s body was waist-deep in the ground in front of him.

Sal got to his feet and raised Erika’s illusion with him, until her feet floated unevenly on the ground. The colors were all wrong and she looked more like a black-and-white representation of herself, with only the gray uniform looking realistic. It would take a lot more finessing to get her to look more like the original, and Sal dismissed the idea of using an illusion in their plan.

Brophy laughed as he walked around the image, his eyes wide with surprise. “This is phenomenal! You could use her as a decoy! They don’t expect us to have an Illusion-based ability, so this level of likeness at night would be more than enough to convince them.” He was getting excited and looked at Sal eagerly. “This could absolutely work! We could ambush them while they’re distracted with this fake Erika! Can you make her eyes gold?”

Sal wasn’t sure but gave it a shot and visualized her glowing irises. The result was gradual as Sal applied the gold rings to her eyes. He recalled the advice Barry had given him about applying textures to objects; because it wasn’t going to be a pattern around the eyeball and just a picture on one location, it worked perfectly.

Brophy clapped excitedly, and Sal decided to try to change the pigment of her skin from the dull gray tone to her porcelain white. It didn’t work as well as he had hoped, with her hair becoming white too. Sal kept trying small changes, and eventually called it a day with brown hair and gold eyes.

“Fantastic work!” Brophy grinned as he stepped around the illusion. He couldn’t resist passing a hand through her head to verify that it was indeed an illusion. He glanced over at Sal to see whether he had disrupted anything, and when he saw Sal smiling, he clapped again.

“This is an excellent development! What else can you do with illusions? Could you hide wards and make them look like normal vegetation?”

Sal paused at that, and Erika’s image flickered from the sudden loss of concentration. He hadn’t considered using illusions to disguise traps, but it sounded possible. All he needed to do was cover them with fake rocks or something.

Sal pulled his tablet out of his pocket and tapped the screen a few times. “I’ll send Barry a message to see how he’d do it and see if he can give me some pointers.”

Brophy smiled. “I’m guessing that it’s his ability that you copied? He’s a Controller, I take it?”

Sal nodded and returned the smile. “Yes, and you should see the sort of stuff he can do. It’s incredible. He can make illusions fight and do all sorts of stuff. In the tournament, he made an illusion of a commander variant demon, which scared the shit out of our opponents.”

Brophy’s eyes widened, which made Sal chuckle.

“I’m absolutely going to tell him that Gallant thinks his power is cool. He’ll get a kick out of that. Well, if he believes me.”

Sal sent off a message to Barry and then tried a few different iterations on the Erika illusion to see whether he could make it more lifelike. No matter how many times he tried to do it, he knew that he’d need to study her in more detail to do the illusion justice.

Sal didn’t want to have that conversation, nor did he particularly want to stare at her for a prolonged period. Sure, she was easy to look at, but being on the receiving end of one of her glares was more than enough to put him off. Brophy offered some help as Sal worked, making some suggestions of things that looked unrealistic or things that might be improved.

“You should mess up her uniform. There’s no way that we look this clean after a few weeks in the wild.” Brophy laughed as he tugged at his own uniform. “Personally, I’d be willing to pay about a hundred Q-Cred to have my stuff professionally cleaned. Washing up with heated water leaves a lot to be desired.”

Sal frowned as he saved the Erika illusion template to his visor. Even though Barry had suggested that he’d learn how to do it naturally himself in time, Sal wasn’t going to make the effort of learning if the visor could do it seamlessly. When it was successfully saved, Sal waved the illusion away and brought up his mother’s Restoration ability. He powered the weave and touched Brophy’s shoulder.

“What’s going on?” Brophy asked cautiously as he looked at Sal’s glowing hand and eyes. “Are you trying to craft me or something?”

His laugh had an edge of concern, which only grew with Sal’s continued silence.

Sal sent the ability through Brophy’s clothing, causing droplets of dirt to roll off the material to the ground below. Brophy’s eyes widened as he turned around in a full circle, inspecting his clothing to see whether he was just imagining the clean sensation. When he tapped his chest, Sal raised an eyebrow.

Brophy looked up at Sal with a confused expression. “It’s not an illusion! These are actually clean!”

Sal finally understood how it must have looked from Brophy’s perspective. He likely didn’t know just how many abilities Sal was capable of replicating.

Brophy faltered as he looked at Sal in shock. “Wait, does that mean you could have been cleaning everyone’s clothes from the very beginning? Why hold out until now?”

Sal sighed as he shrugged and gestured to the camp. “Nobody offered to pay a hundred Q-Cred.”

He gave Brophy a wide smile, and it took the Offense class a few seconds to realize that Sal was joking. When Sal was about to touch his visor to resume the work on the illusion, Brophy halted him.

“I won’t give you a hundred Q-Cred, but what if I give you the equivalent in special training?”

His smile was conspiratorial, and Sal was curious to know what Gallant might possibly want to teach him. The first thing that came to mind was martial arts or some kind of stealth technique. Both of which would likely be useful at some point in the future. Sal readily agreed and gave Brophy a nod, which elicited a laugh from him.

“Excellent! I’ve wanted to teach Rochelle this for a while now, but she’s not at the base level to try it safely.” Brophy pointed at Sal’s chest. “But based on the output you have, I’d say you’re able to give it a shot.”

Sal frowned. The only difference between him and Rochelle would likely be the number of essence gates they had available. Brophy wasn’t a Body Manipulator, so there was no way he could do the same sort of exercise as Vanessa to break through essence gates.

“You’re talking about essence gates?”

Brophy raised his palm and tilted it left to right. “Yes and no. My mother taught me an essence control method that drastically improved my internal cores. You might not realize it from looking at me, but I’ve accessed over two hundred gates.” He smiled proudly as he placed his right palm on his chest. “It’s a method that the top rankers created to enhance their capabilities after reaching the pinnacle of their abilities. I can teach it to you.”

Sal scoffed at the prospect. “There’s absolutely no way that it is worth just a hundred Q-Cred. Something like that sounds invaluable.”

Brophy’s smile faded. “Well, as you’ve likely deduced…it can come with a cost. I don’t anticipate that your ability will suddenly evolve beyond your capacity, though. So, what do you say?”

Sal laughed as he shrugged. “I guess I don’t have anything to lose. Will it hurt to learn?”

Brophy blinked before he laughed. “Of course not! It’s just a breathing exercise coupled with essence control. Think of yourself like the wood, and this method as the infusing of essence. You’ll ultimately become a better product than before. That is, if you meet the requirements.”

“Requirements?” Sal wasn’t sure he was following Brophy’s train of thought.

Brophy gestured at Sal’s revolver with a grin. “You said so yourself that it’s invaluable knowledge. So, what say we make a small wager? You help us get a defeat against the ambushers this weekend, and I’ll teach you the breathing method.”

Sal shook his head and laughed ruefully. “Right, so all we need to achieve is the impossible and you’ll give me the invaluable method of the top rankers? Sounds like a completely reasonable thing, if you ask me.”

Brophy clapped Sal on the shoulder. “Glad we’re on the same page. But you know what? Rest time is over. We can get at least another five sets in before the sun goes down.”

Before Sal could counter, Brophy rushed off into the forest, leaving him standing there with his revolver in hand. He pushed all other thoughts to one side before raising his revolver and chasing after Brophy, his hand coming up to fire at the thrown object that flew across his view.