A blinding arc of yellow lightning tore through the smoky air, slamming into the asphalt three feet from the red-headband kid.
BOOM!
The street buckled. A cloud of pulverized concrete and shattered glass sprayed outward, catching Rain across his forearms as he ducked behind the metal frame of a bus shelter.
The fire-user roared, dropping his shoulder and charging straight through the electrical haze. Flames engulfed his right arm up to the neck, turning the cloth of his yellow basketball jersey to black ash in seconds. He swung a wild, heavy hook. The lightning-user didn’t back off. He stepped directly into the strike, his fists wrapped in crackling blue voltage, driving a short left uppercut into the bigger guy’s ribs.
BOOM!
A shockwave of heat and thunder shattered the remaining glass in three neighboring store displays. Rain pulled his head down, his ears ringing from the concussive pressure.
’Where is security?’ Rain thought, his teeth gritted as he peeked around the metal support post. ’There’s a main avenue being torn to pieces and not a single guard in sight.’
He had heard rumors online.
Older students talked about how the academy turned a blind eye to fights, treating street scuffles as unscripted field conditioning.
’But if that is true, why did a drone pull me out some days ago?’ Rain thought.
The clinic nurse had specifically mentioned an automated security bot dragging his battered body off the bricks. The campus security force was a mix of human staff and AI security bots, but the bots were supposed to be a small, highly responsive fraction of the patrols. If they monitored alleyways for fallen students, why wasn’t a single machine hovering over a main road being pulverized by elemental strikes?
Rain didn’t have time to answer his own question. He couldn’t remember the moment he was rescued anyway, only the cold cot in the clinic afterward.
The fire-user spun on his heel, his left foot catching the lightning-user under the jaw. The smaller guy flew backward twenty feet, skidding across the asphalt before slamming his shoulder against a parked delivery truck.
"Is that all you’ve got?!" the red-headband kid screamed, his voice hoarse. He raised both hands above his head, pulling a massive, swirling sphere of fire out of the air. The heat radiated across the road, scorching the paint on the surrounding cars. "Take it back! Apologize this minute!"
He threw his arms forward, driving the boulder of fire straight down the narrow avenue.
The lightning-user pushed off the truck, launching himself directly into the burning projectile with a crack of thunder.
The two powers collided in the center of the road, creating an expanding sphere of blue and orange plasma. The shockwave ripped the metal roof completely off the bus shelter. A massive jagged chunk of iron and glass tore free from the frame, whistling through the smoke directly toward Rain’s head.
Rain didn’t decide to react. His brain just registered a command.
’Flash Step.’
[Flash Step: Zero Drag activated.]
[Mana: 1/10]
The world snapped.
The iron sheet slammed into the brick wall behind him with a deafening screech, throwing up a shower of red dust. Rain hit the pavement thirty feet down the sidewalk, landing heavily on his hands and knees. His knees skidded across the rough concrete, his breath coming in a sharp, terrified gasp as he stared back at the smoking crater where he had been standing a fraction of a second ago. His heart hammered violently against his ribcage, his ankles humming with the residual shock of instantaneous acceleration.
Before the two fighters could draw another breath to hurl themselves forward again, the air in the center of the street went completely dead.
The wind stopped. The crackle of electricity vanished. The roaring flame on the red-headband kid’s arm flickered once and went out like a snuffed candle.
A man stepped out of the lingering smoke, walking casually into the space between the two fighters.
He wore a dark gray suit with no tie, his hands tucked loosely into his trouser pockets. He had silver hair cut short at the sides, a neat beard, and a calm, bored expression on his face. He didn’t raise a shield. He didn’t use any visible skill.
He simply stood there, and as the residual shockwaves of lightning and fire washed over him, the energy dissolved harmlessly against his clothes, vanishing into thin air like drops of rain hitting a hot iron plate.
BOOM!
A low, heavy pulse of pure pressure erupted from his boots, settling over the entire street. The sheer weight of it slammed both basketball-jersey kids to their knees, the asphalt cracking under their kneecaps.
Rain felt the air get heavy in his own lungs, forcing him to lean his shoulder against a streetlight to stay upright.
"Instructor Vance..." someone in the distant basketball court crowd whispered, the name carrying down the street in a hushed, terrified murmur. "He’s an A-rank instructor..."
Vance didn’t yell. He didn’t even look angry. He pulled one hand out of his pocket, checked a small silver wristwatch on his left wrist, and sighed.
"You broke three commercial displays, damaged a municipal bus frame, and ruined fifty yards of fresh asphalt," Vance said, his voice quiet, clear, and dripping with total indifference. "The repair bill will be split evenly between your personal student accounts. It will be deducted before Friday’s allocation."
The two kids on the ground bowed their heads low, their faces pale, shivering under the invisible pressure resting on their shoulders.
"Clear the street," Vance added, turning his back on them without a second glance. "Focus on school, kids"
With a single step, Vance vanished. He didn’t run and didn’t leave a trail. He was simply gone, leaving the ruined street in absolute, dead quiet.
Rain stood by the streetlight, his hand trembling slightly against the cold metal.
His eyes were wide, staring at the empty space where Vance had stood. A genuine, unguarded sense of awe washed over him, cold and heavy in his stomach.
He had spent days looking at numbers on a screen, measuring his strength stats, worrying about his F-rank baseline, and calculating credit debts. But seeing an A-rank instructor step into the middle of two destructive elemental blasts, erase them with his presence alone, and walk away without a scratch made the entire world feel terrifyingly massive.
That was the ceiling. That was what real power looked like in this place. A person standing forty feet away, completely untouchable.
Rain swallowed hard, rubbing his damp palms against his sweatpants.
"Hey!"
A voice called out from behind him.
Rain turned his head. A guy from the direction of the basketball court was walking down the sidewalk toward him. He looked like an upperclassman, wearing a green canvas jacket over a gym shirt, carrying a water bottle in one hand. He didn’t look familiar, didn’t have a uniform, and clearly didn’t know Rain from any other kid on the street.
The guy stopped five feet away, a wide, impressed grin on his face as he looked Rain up and down.
"That reaction was crazy, man," the guy said, tossing his water bottle from his right hand to his left. "I was watching from the fence line. That metal plate came out of the smoke at eighty miles an hour. You didn’t even flinch, you just glided sideways before the glass hit the ground. Your burst speed is clean as hell."
Rain froze.
The blood in his veins went ice cold. The noise of the street faded out into a dull hum.
’Wait,’ Rain’s mind slammed to a complete halt, his blue eyes locked onto the upperclassman’s face. ’He saw me?’
He had spent the last two days operating on the quiet, absolute assumption that Flash Step was effectively invisible motion to the naked eye, a movement so fast that nobody could track the path between start and finish. But this random guy standing on the sidewalk had just watched him use it in real time, reading the burst without a second of confusion.
The upperclassman tilted his head, his grin turning slightly puzzled at Rain’s blank stare. "What? You okay? What’s the name?"
Rain blinked, his throat completely dry, his hands twitching inside his hoodie pockets. He stumbled back a half-step, catching his heel on the curb.
"Huh..." Rain choked out, his voice squeaking slightly, caught completely off guard. "Me?"