The family was tense with the pressure of the startling revelation.

Jimmy, for one, was no longer as stiff as he was known to be since his conception – it was as if sixteen-year-old pressure had dissipated from his shoulders all at once. However, this was not a good thing in his case.

“It was hard, you know?” Jimmy rubbed the sides of his brown face, seemingly on the verge of the most patriotic tears of his short life. “I always thought I had to be the normal one but…” he brushed a bit of water that had accumulated near the corner of his eyes. “I guess, Dad is a human too!”

The last bit was said with more force than necessary – it was usually a voice he reserved only for the national anthem.

Nasa puffed her non-existent chest, standing in a dazzling akimbo of infinite confidence, clearly pleased that she had pushed the family towards a new stage of intimacy; though, the scathing gazes of Nissa and Zane told a completely different story.

‘These children of ours.’

Emily was more contemplative than anything, and her thinking face had always been a cause for concern for Zeel and Nissa. Emily’s unique way of thinking always left something to be desired.

The last time the girl wore such a concentratedly profound thinking face, she brought home underage, aspiring prostitutes in a cake for her father’s birthday. The reason behind Emily’s idea was rather simple – the younger the better – said everyone who ever went to prison for child molestation.

Of course, Nissa didn’t agree with her enthusiastic daughter and that was the first time the eccentric mother whooped all her children – why all of them? Because one could not do something without consulting the others, and as it turned out, Nissa was right on the money.

Jimmy, in his righteousness, selected girls who needed a better life.

Emily, in her hotheadedness, was the one to convince her siblings of the benefits of the idea.

And Nasa, in her genius, made the cake with the perfect ingredients to match the taste of the minors – Nissa had to whoop Nasa extra because of that!

“Nope,” Zane and Nissa shared eye contact and came to the same conclusion about their anime blunder. ‘Even this much will not damage our reputation as parents – these kids are just not that bright.’

Of course, Nissa was a genius, Emily was Olympic-level athletic, and Jimmy was the perfect, most patriotic son in all the ways that counted, but Zane and Nissa knew their children were missing something fundamentally important to all human beings – common sense.

‘It’s not as if their mother/father has it either!’ Zane and Nissa silently took shots at each other in the depths of their subconscious.

“I know we should have deleted all those peeks we took!” Nissa groaned, knowing only by acknowledging the matter would everyone agree to put it to bed. “But that should be the end of the matter. You know how shy your father is.”

Zane closed his eyes and silently absorbed the blow from Nissa that painted the entire thing as his fault – to the children, it was as good an acknowledgement they could get from the former elite soldier.

Having a father like Zane meant an eye twitch meant no, and a finger twitch meant heck no, don’t force me to rip out your throat today!

Just as Jimmy and Emily were about to ask a question that would guarantee their murder before the game even started, a sudden buzz of vibrations echoed across the field - no one knew where it came from but they could all feel it.

It was meant to be felt, after all.

“We should get ready,” Jimmy widened his stance, gone was the childish boy who was stupidly celebrating mere moments ago, instead replaced by a soldier scanning his eyes over what was soon to become a battlefield of unimaginable carnage. “Why does no one seem to be bypassing the knowledge system anymore?” he noted immediately. “This would be the time for the less experienced to save points and take advantage of the lapse in the system.”

‘An astute observation but the wrong question …’ Zane internally complimented his son and chastised the boy at the same time, before he attempted to bypass the system in his mind, but there was a solid wall blocking the process.

And that was the right question to ask – Why a change in the firewall?

Bypassing the knowledge system was never an easy thing to do, but altering the code was like pushing through jello. Still, now the jello had become a titanium wall – that made it harder but not impossible.

This almost made every alteration up until now feel like a… mistake – something the TRANCE System shouldn’t be capable of experiencing.

“Because it is not possible anymore,” Zane replied to his son’s question, bringing his hands together to mould pixels into the gear he needed as a demonstration – nothing happened. “Something has changed in the past couple of seconds.” The Elite Soldier added. “But it's not impossible to access the Knowledge System, just much harder. It’s almost as if—”

“The system is compensating for an earlier error?” Nasa was the one to finish her father’s statement, drawing all eyes in her direction. She was the genius of the family so even Zane had to offer his daughter adequate respect when necessary. “I think I understand what changed,” she slowly continued. “The competition went live a couple of minutes ago but nobody is attacking because we don’t know if it's legal yet. This is definitely a mistake of the system.”

“TRANCE doesn’t make mistakes,” Zane said his statement so strongly because he genuinely believed it. “AVARAY doesn’t make mistakes.”

“You’re right, and I can’t be wrong because—"

Nasa knelt and retrieved a flower from the infinite amount on the field. There was nothing odd about that sort of action, but what was odd was when Nasa spun the flower between her fingers and tossed it into the air.

It disappeared.

Then, the notification lit up in the family’s joint account – One Purification Flower collected [001 / 200].

The family had expected as much but they were still off the mark by quite a bit.

Zane slid his finger down the screen that had appeared and noticed an impossibly long list of flowers to be collected, each rarer than the one before, and by the time he had reached the end, he realized that most of those flowers had only a handful available on the field.

Nissa had been right on the mark, the competition had indeed started some minutes ago, and yet, nobody was attacking.

“Because we are all experts, or at the very least, professionals,” Jimmy turned around to scan the competition on the field while making silent hand gestures to his family. “Nobody has attacked because they are waiting for the system announcement, but more than that, some people probably already discovered it was safe to attack some time ago, but they are charging for the grandest attack they can perform in the bounds of ten thousand credits.”

Zane, Emily, Nissa, Nasa, and even Jimmy, himself, slowly started to allocate the necessary resources in preparation for the devastating hell-storm to come. A slow murmur made its way across the field, showing that the slower amongst those present had started to realize some things.

“You guys remember what the initial data collection told us?” Nissa questioned the kids as a review activity.

“Eight O Clock hold a monster of a team,” Nissa responded, positioning her body adjacent to Zane but also facing the eight o'clock direction. “What are the chances of them choosing to attack our direction.”

“High likely,” Nasa responded, gesturing for the family to follow her positioning as she took subtle steps to the right. “Six O Clock has a highly defense-oriented team so any attack from that direction should be covered as long as we stand right where we are.”

“Three O Clock is the direction of our Scorched-Earth contingency,” Emily shifted her position ever so slightly away from her family, not wanting them to get caught up in the destructive nature of her attacks that would soon come to bear. “This direction gets us the rarest flowers in Quadrants 20, 24, 16, 12, and later 5.”

Clumps of pixels blinked in and out of existence near the family, and as soon as the other Gunners saw this happening, they decided it was also time to start the battle with a magnificent burst of booming.

BOOOOOOOOOOOM

BOOOOOOOOOOOM

BOOOOOOOOOOOM

It was as if the fields of flowers, themselves, were exploding, but Zane and the others knew it was probably the mines laid beforehand, or maybe even the hidden detonation flowers someone, unfortunately, stepped on as soon as the battle commenced.

Jimmy had already moulded what was needed, but he had yet to associate the knowledge that came with it. The truly complex constructions needed words unlike mines and basic grenades.

“[Halo: Bubble Shield - the ‘dissipative ’-style deployable energy shield system of the bubble shield is Forerunner in origin. Servants utilized such a system to generate temporary fortifications using a sphere of interlocking hexagonal force enfolder elements, similar to those used by Sentinels and Protectors.]”

[(2,000 Credit cost accredited to Jim-da-patriot) (8,000 Credits Remaining)]

Jimmy finished chanting and the cost popped onto the interface in front of him; then, without missing a beat, he smacked his hands on the ground and the Bubble Shield flashed to life, covering a radius of five meters.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

Zane and Nissa watched stoically as more than a dozen attacks came directly for their family, smashing against the mighty barrier that Jimmy had managed to act in the nick of time.

Of course, there were backups in place had Jimmy failed, but those were not credit-saving conducive.

Zane, Nissa, Emily, and Nasa waited for their turns after having accumulated the necessary resources to allow their creations to go active the instant they were needed. This was the initial battle, but all the true experts allowed the kids to get the credits out of their systems first.

Then, the monsters would come into play!

The purple corrupted essence of Data-Bit guns flashed onto the Bubble Shield, causing cracks to appear in something that held a far superior authority level. Then again, data-bit guns weren’t exactly legal so it was a miracle the shield remained firm at all.

A couple more cracks appeared in the Bubble Shield.

Through the distorted transparency of the Bubble Shield, Zane and his family watched as some of the professionals started to move, mowing down the Gunners in their way with basic weapons of IX-45s from the Mundane Category.

There was a child amidst the battle – or at least, her avatar was a child.

The child stood in the center of the chaos firing a Walther P38 – a gun specifically wired with a GWIN from the Rambo movie series. A Walther P38 had the special effect of distortions– making the user hard to hit in a battle where they were the centre of attention.

It was designed as a joke in the Rambo movies where the star could never get hit by a bullet even when standing in the middle of the firing. Though three seconds into the battle, the child’s head was blown away – obviously, even Rambo’s special effect had its limits.

BOOOOOOOOM

BOOOOOOOOM

BOOOOOOOOM

The Bubble Shield endured three more bombardments, causing the cracks to spread further. Nissa, Emily, Nasa, and Jimmy narrowed their eyes in preparation, while Zane lost the tension that family life dropped onto his shoulders – the battlefield was the only place he could truly be himself.

And his time was now!

The expert gunners started to join the battle, moving forward without any weapons but peak-grade stealth technology. Thousands of beams, explosions, splashes of blood, and cries of pain echoed through the distortion caused by the Bubble Shield.

“It’s now,” Jimmy’s voice drifted into his family’s ears when he noted the integrity of the Bubble Shield had almost dropped to zero. “Three… Two… One… GO!”

WHOOSH