14: Chapter 014: The Challenge, The Challenge, Los’s First Public Fight
“Jordan.”
Los’s voice pulled Jordan back from wherever her thoughts had taken her.
He looked at her steadily.
“I know you’ve been working to climb the school rankings to prove your abilities to your parents.”
He let that sit for a moment, then continued: “But is climbing the rankings really the only way to do that?”
Jordan went quiet.
Her instinct told her that Los was going to do something in the not-so-distant future.
Something that would shake New York and reach much further than that.
She was just opening her mouth to say something when a commotion broke out in the courtyard below.
“Los, you scared to take a challenge?”
“Hiding behind women?
What kind of man does that?”
“Get down here!
I’m calling you out!”
Jordan’s expression tightened.
“Ignore them.”
She sounded resigned.
“Those are basically all Cate’s admirers.
Every one of them wants to put you down in front of her and make themselves look good.”
To Jordan, the whole thing was embarrassingly juvenile.
Not worth acknowledging.
Los thought it over for a moment, then stood up from the desk chair.
“You’re actually going down there?” Jordan stared at him.
Los didn’t strike her as someone who made decisions like this.
“Back down from something like this once and they’ll just keep pushing.”
Los pulled back the curtain and looked down at the crowd gathered in the courtyard below, a knowing look crossing his face.
“Don’t worry.
Gold isn’t the only thing I’ve synthesized.”
Five minutes later.
A message tore through Godolkin’s app, its student forums, and word of mouth all at once, spreading across the entire campus at speed:
“Los, ranked 373, a first-year freshman, has accepted a challenge from Steve, ranked 18?”
“Los?
The Chinese-American freshman Cate’s been paying all that attention to?”
“Oh, this is going to be something.”
“Move.
Get to the training ground before it fills up.”
The news reached the Lamplighter crime-fighting class.
“Golden Boy.”
The moment Anderson saw the message he was on his feet.
He went straight to his roommate.
Let’s go.”
Golden Boy cast a quick glance at Cate’s back as they left the room, already running a scenario in his head: Los goes down hard to Steve, then he steps in, beats Steve, wins back the whole situation.
“I want to see exactly what this guy can actually do,” Anderson said, face tight.
The coin was still sitting in him like a splinter.
His magnetic ability failing on it.
He hadn’t let go of that.
Within minutes, every supe student at Godolkin was moving toward the training ground.
Under ten minutes later, the five-hundred-seat arena was completely full.
The biggest turnout since the school had opened its doors.
The crowd was large enough that teachers and professors started drifting in as well.
The training ground was cylindrical in structure, open to the sky at the center, with the noon sun coming straight down over the field.
Godolkin encouraged its particular brand of high-pressure competition, and while the bullying happened behind closed doors, official challenge matches were held in plain sight.
As long as both students agreed, a one-on-one fight could be held here with the school’s medical team on standby.
On the field, two figures faced each other.
Los wasn’t small by any measure, tall and lean with the kind of build that read as quietly solid.
But the student across from him stood over two meters.
Tight curly hair above a blunt, hard-featured face.
Dark skin and a physique that was built like packed stone across every visible surface.
The size alone carried enough presence to fill the space around him.
Up in the stands, Anderson leaned back and worked it through.
“He’s trying to make a name for himself.
Use Steve as the vehicle.” He thought it over.
“A student ranked in the three hundreds taking down someone in the top twenty would be the first time that’s ever happened here.”
“He’s thinking too much.”
Golden Boy smiled, arms folded, no uncertainty in him.
“Steve and I have gone at it plenty of times.
Up close, his hand-to-hand is second only to mine.”
A student nearby dropped their voice: “Look up there.
Is that the Dean?”
Golden Boy and Anderson looked up.
There, in one of the high seats, was Dean Indira Shetty herself, watching the field.
The Dean was an ordinary person running a school full of supes, and she ran it with more control and capability than anyone would have expected.
Both Golden Boy and Anderson had genuine respect for her.
What surprised them was that a match not involving anyone in the top ten had pulled her out at all.
A wave of noise rippled through the crowd.
Through the audience came a tall figure, bright gold hair catching every available light, pale skin sharp in the noon sun.
“Los.
Water.”
Moving with the easy comfort of someone there specifically for him, Cate made her way onto the field and handed Los a water bottle she had been keeping warm against her body. This chapter was copied from novelping dot com without permission.
Los took it without a word and drank.
In the stands, throats tightened across a noticeable portion of the audience.
That was Cate.
The Cate who was famously impossible to approach.
What exactly had been done to her?
“Come on, Steve!”
“Grind your boot into his face!”
“Show him what a top-twenty looks like!”
Every student running on envy and resentment threw their weight behind the overwhelming favorite.
The noise was one-sided and loud.
The only one in the stands cheering quietly for Los was Jordan, watching with poorly concealed unease and no clear picture yet of how this was supposed to end.
“Hold onto this for me.
It’ll be done soon.”
Los handed the half-finished water bottle back to Cate with complete confidence.
Cate took it and held his gaze for a long moment, then turned and walked back off the field, golden hair lifting as she moved.
Her ability was thought manipulation and memory rewriting.
Cate had understood from an early age what her power was built for: attaching to strong people and running them from the inside.
Since arriving at Godolkin she had been quietly evaluating candidates.
Golden Boy and Anderson had both made the list.
Then Los showed up.
His behavior and the way he thought were completely outside anything she had prepared for.
She couldn’t take the lead in conversation the way she usually could, and her thought manipulation landed on him like it had hit a wall.
By every reasonable measure, Los was not her ideal candidate.
You couldn’t work with someone you couldn’t reach mentally.
But.
Being on the receiving end of that for once, the involuntary sense of awe that came with it, had started pulling at something in her she hadn’t known was there.
Like a door had opened onto a room she hadn’t seen before.
Who are you, Los.
What are you hiding.
Back in her seat, holding the water bottle close, Cate kept her eyes on the figure standing at the center of the field.
Show me what you can do.
If he was strong enough, being the one pulled into his orbit instead of the other way around might not be something she needed to resist.
On the field.
Steve was riding the noise of nearly the entire school cheering for him, feeling every bit the warrior slaying the dragon and taking back the princess, standing firmly on the right side of things.
He rolled his thick palms together and looked down at Los, who was finishing a set of push-ups to warm up.
“Ready?”
Los stood, dusted his gloves off, and nodded.
“Let’s begin.”
The words had barely landed.
Steve launched at him like a human brown bear, all of that size and momentum driving forward at once.
A superhuman fight was about to start.