and
wobbling here and there when he did get hit…but Bo had already made it across.
He’d never stopped to walk, and though Paul couldn’t pay attention to what he
was doing he noticed a hail of deflections coming off him as he got pelted
repeatedly.
Jason had a better view from the starting area, in
which he saw Paul slow up and work his way across the rail gradually while Bo
didn’t slow at all. He ran right across, with all the thuds just bouncing off
his Lachka fields as if it was no trouble at all. That was the first sign that
something was considerably different between the two, but it was only the start
of the course and arguably the easiest section.
When Bo finished getting across he had to climb a
ladder, still under thud assault that would last through the entire course. He
scurried up the ladder like he had gone across the beam, almost as if the thuds
being stopped a few inches from his body were nothing more than holograms and
couldn’t touch him. In fact Jason hadn’t seen a single one hit him, while several
had gotten through to Paul.
At the top of the ladders were three circles, into
which Bo stepped and activated the timer. He held position as 5 times as many
thuds shot at him, literally throwing about 30 per second from multiple angles,
but the trailblazer just settled in and blocked them all. First he caught and
dropped them, then he began deflecting them back
towards various targets near the turrets and racking up some bonus points. He
could have grabbed one and threw it back, but Jason noticed he wasn’t doing
that. He was actually bouncing them in the direction he wanted…which was when
Jason finally realized he was just showing off.
When the timer expired and Paul was just getting to
the base of the ladder the floor opened up beneath Bo and dropped him down
through a short tunnel and rounded a curve, sliding him out to a lower section
of the course that had two different sizes of thuds…one tiny and one large,
both of which were being first at him at different speeds and with different
kinetic loads. Trick of this section was to probe his differentiation skills
and see just how aware he was of what he was doing.
Again, Bo surprised Jason. He traced a line on the
floor that had a holographic beacon through a complicated series of twists and
turns around an otherwise open square area the size of a basketball court,
getting hammered the entire time he had to stay inside a two meter perimeter of
the glowing ‘mist’ that was guiding him erratically. Adjusting to it and
maneuvering as he was should have been a problem, but Bo handled it with ease
and continued to rack up bonus points by deflecting thuds towards nearby
targets…and doing so individually, because Jason could see his Lachka fields
thanks to his Rentar ability, and he was in fact creating tiny fields to
intercept each…and much smaller fields than Paul was using.
The smaller the field the more accurate the trajectory
trace you had to pull, and given that this was all happening in a split second
you had to create wider fields the less sure you were of their exact position.
With Bo’s fields being so tiny it was almost as if he could see them coming
with ease…which shouldn’t have been possible with so many being fired at him
nonstop.
Jason was already impressed, but it only got better
the further Bo worked around the course. Eventually the thuds increased speed,
size, and diversity…setting up a final gauntlet run down a meter wide elevated
‘sidewalk’ with disqualification pits on either side and a hailstorm of thuds.
The ceiling and nearby walls were literally covered with launchers, some of
which were sending out baseball sized projectiles while others were spraying
him with pebbles in shotgun sprays.
Those Bo did take with single fields, which Jason
wasn’t sure was within the rules or not, but it was how he also would have
reacted had he been running it. The normal-sized thuds and larger he kept
deflecting singly,
wobbling here and there when he did get hit…but Bo had already made it across.
He’d never stopped to walk, and though Paul couldn’t pay attention to what he
was doing he noticed a hail of deflections coming off him as he got pelted
repeatedly.
Jason had a better view from the starting area, in
which he saw Paul slow up and work his way across the rail gradually while Bo
didn’t slow at all. He ran right across, with all the thuds just bouncing off
his Lachka fields as if it was no trouble at all. That was the first sign that
something was considerably different between the two, but it was only the start
of the course and arguably the easiest section.
When Bo finished getting across he had to climb a
ladder, still under thud assault that would last through the entire course. He
scurried up the ladder like he had gone across the beam, almost as if the thuds
being stopped a few inches from his body were nothing more than holograms and
couldn’t touch him. In fact Jason hadn’t seen a single one hit him, while several
had gotten through to Paul.
At the top of the ladders were three circles, into
which Bo stepped and activated the timer. He held position as 5 times as many
thuds shot at him, literally throwing about 30 per second from multiple angles,
but the trailblazer just settled in and blocked them all. First he caught and
dropped them, then he began deflecting them back
towards various targets near the turrets and racking up some bonus points. He
could have grabbed one and threw it back, but Jason noticed he wasn’t doing
that. He was actually bouncing them in the direction he wanted…which was when
Jason finally realized he was just showing off.
When the timer expired and Paul was just getting to
the base of the ladder the floor opened up beneath Bo and dropped him down
through a short tunnel and rounded a curve, sliding him out to a lower section
of the course that had two different sizes of thuds…one tiny and one large,
both of which were being first at him at different speeds and with different
kinetic loads. Trick of this section was to probe his differentiation skills
and see just how aware he was of what he was doing.
Again, Bo surprised Jason. He traced a line on the
floor that had a holographic beacon through a complicated series of twists and
turns around an otherwise open square area the size of a basketball court,
getting hammered the entire time he had to stay inside a two meter perimeter of
the glowing ‘mist’ that was guiding him erratically. Adjusting to it and
maneuvering as he was should have been a problem, but Bo handled it with ease
and continued to rack up bonus points by deflecting thuds towards nearby
targets…and doing so individually, because Jason could see his Lachka fields
thanks to his Rentar ability, and he was in fact creating tiny fields to
intercept each…and much smaller fields than Paul was using.
The smaller the field the more accurate the trajectory
trace you had to pull, and given that this was all happening in a split second
you had to create wider fields the less sure you were of their exact position.
With Bo’s fields being so tiny it was almost as if he could see them coming
with ease…which shouldn’t have been possible with so many being fired at him
nonstop.
Jason was already impressed, but it only got better
the further Bo worked around the course. Eventually the thuds increased speed,
size, and diversity…setting up a final gauntlet run down a meter wide elevated
‘sidewalk’ with disqualification pits on either side and a hailstorm of thuds.
The ceiling and nearby walls were literally covered with launchers, some of
which were sending out baseball sized projectiles while others were spraying
him with pebbles in shotgun sprays.
Those Bo did take with single fields, which Jason
wasn’t sure was within the rules or not, but it was how he also would have
reacted had he been running it. The normal-sized thuds and larger he kept
deflecting singly,
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