The Clean Up
The glacier was still melting when the police arrived.
YT saw them coming through the distorted ice, their blue uniforms moving fast across the arena floor. He let the internal dark flame finish its work, stepped out through the cracked, steaming surface, and immediately had hands on him. Officers piled in from both sides.
The first two got close enough to grab. YT let them.
He dropped his weight, pulling them both down with him. The impact took them out of the equation quietly—no energy, just physics, their heads meeting the floor in the chaos of the pile. The others moved in to secure him.
They didn't see the neon lines on his suit go dark. They didn't see him go still in a way that was fundamentally different from being unconscious.
What they saw was two more officers go down as toxic spines slipped through the gaps in their armor. Then the pile stopped moving. Someone called it in. When medics finally sorted through the heap, they found the clothes, the blood, and the bodies.
They did not find YT.
Mr. Han was sitting up when security reached him. He was pale and his hands were shaking, every movement costing him something, but he was upright. He waved off the medics who moved toward Damien.
"He'll be seen to," Mr. Han said, his voice thin but certain. He looked at a nearby student and gave a direct order. "Take him home. Stay with him until he's stable."
The Recovery
Damien lay on his side at home while the neurotoxin was slowly drawn out by a classmate whose specific ability was the only reason the process was possible. It wasn't painful anymore. It was just slow, heavy, and very quiet.
He stared at the bedroom wall.
He had been in real fights before. He had fought the Coles, the crowd in the square, and clashed every morning in the kitchen with Wess. But he had never once thought he might actually lose.
The blade had been at his neck. A drop of poison hanging from the steel. He had been on the floor, one arm not responding, the other barely twitching, and the ceiling lights had been very bright and very far away.
He stared at the wall and didn't say anything.
After a while, the heaviness started to lift. He flexed his fingers, then his arm. He sat up slowly, checked the movement in his legs, and decided he was going to be fine.
He didn't feel fine. But he was going to be.
The Arsenal
When classes resumed, Mr. Han stood at the front of the room looking like a man who had made an irrevocable decision overnight. He waited for the room to settle, then reached behind his desk and pulled a heavy cloth off a long table that nobody had noticed.
Weapons were arranged in a neat row. There were swords, a scythe, a taser, a firearm, brass knuckles, a military first-aid kit, and several others. They were different shapes and materials, each carrying a faint, distinct energy signature.
"The recent incident made something clear," Mr. Han said. "This world has been getting dangerous very quickly. We train you in combat alongside your education, but for better preparedness in genuine emergencies, each of you will now be assigned a weapon." He gestured along the table. "The majority of these sync with your specific energy type. Choose carefully."
Wayne was already at the table. He picked up the black pistol, checked the weight of it, and walked back to his seat.
Mr. Han watched him go. "...Oh. Well. Just go ahead then."
Damien chose a pristine white sword. Cecelia moved along the table without hurrying and lifted the scythe with the ease of someone who had already decided. Tina took the taser. Tyrone considered the table for a moment, then picked up the first-aid kit without a word.
Alex was the last one standing there. Everyone else had filed back to their seats. The brass knuckles sat at the end of the table, spiked, asymmetrical, and easily the least elegant thing on it.
She picked them up. "What am I supposed to do with these?" she asked no one in particular.
The Prophecy
Tyrone's class teacher appeared at the door, exchanging a few quiet words with Mr. Han. Her students, she announced, could stay in this room as she had somewhere to be.
Mr. Han nodded and turned back to the class.
Damien caught Wayne's eye and tilted his head toward the empty seat at the double desk beside him. Wayne looked at the seat, looked at Damien, and got up with the exhausted energy of someone moving furniture. He dropped into it.
Damien looked toward Tina. She paused. Mr. Han raised an eyebrow at the delay. She moved to Wayne's desk and sat down.
"Hey, Wayne," she said warmly.
Wayne produced a sound that was technically a response. Tina pulled out the taser, turned it on with a hum, and held it near his arm in a way that was clearly a joke. Without a wasted movement, Wayne began to actively burn.
Damien sent a water bubble sideways without looking. His gaze was entirely fixed on the front of the room, specifically on the fact that Tyrone had taken the seat he had cleared for Tina. Tyrone was now sitting in it with his arms crossed, apparently intending to stay.
Damien's expression did not change. It simply intensified. He maintained the glare for the duration of the lesson. Tyrone stared at the board and tried to focus.
Mr. Han cleared his throat.
"Two hundred years ago, good and evil were at war at every level. Animals, humans, and the deities themselves. Eventually, light prevailed. The darkness deity was banished to the southern hemisphere." He moved to the board, picking up a marker. "Everyone who wanted peace followed the light deity north. The world we live in now began. It is a world where positive energy holds more sway, where people are inclined toward good because of what the light deity emanates from the North Pole. Travel south is strictly forbidden to prevent contamination. Any questions so far?"
Wayne's hand went up.
Mr. Han's shoulders dropped slightly. "Yes, Wayne."
"If everything is so positive now, why do we have a rapidly growing military?"
The class exhaled as one.
"Let's proceed," Tyrone said flatly.
"I agree," Mr. Han said. "After peace was established, the light deity gave a prophecy concerning a potential future threat." He paused. Something crossed his face for a moment, a hesitation that didn't quite fit the rhythm of his usual lectures. "He said a boy would be born with an impossibly high positive energy reading. This boy would appear to be good, but would eventually bring destruction to the northern hemisphere. Unless stopped."
The room was dead quiet.
Damien swallowed hard. Nobody looked at him. The lesson moved on.
Wayne sat with his hand half-raised, choosing not to lift it the rest of the way. He was six years old again, standing in the hallway of their house with his back against the wall. Mr. Han's voice had come through the gap in the door, low and careful. Something about Damien. Something about the medical report being forged, the number changed from eighty to sixty-eight. Don't take him to the public hospital. His true energy could make him a candidate for the prophecy. His parents had agreed in hushed voices.
Wayne had never said anything. He put his hand down.
Two rows back, Alex stared blankly at her desk. Mr. Han had found her before her very first class, catching her in the corridor with specific instructions: There is a boy here with an unusually high positive energy reading. You'll be able to see it immediately. Keep what you see to yourself.
She understood a little better now.
The Executive Briefing
At the bottom of the city's restricted naval channel, the lights of Piggy's underwater research center hummed against the dark water outside the reinforced glass.
YT materialized directly behind Piggy's shoulder.
"There you are," Piggy said, not turning from the monitors. "Had me worried for a second."
"Have a little more faith in your subordinates."
Dr. Julian stepped out from the edge of the room, his white coat perfectly clean, the silver sword resting at his hip. "It is hard to argue for your efficiency when you didn't finish the job."
"I can go again."
"Executives don't do second chances," Julian's voice was pleasant but absolute. "Besides, Mr. Cole isn't worth the political heat anymore."
YT exhaled. "It would be much easier if we had an Executive embedded in the police."
A broad figure moved out from the back of the room. He had a wide frame, heavy with dense muscle rather than fat. His face defaulted to smiling, carrying deep-set wrinkles from years of it, with kind eyes that didn't quite match the shadow operations room he was standing in. This was Dan, Executive of the Military.
"Come on," Dan chuckled. "Everyone knows the army is cooler than the law."
Beside him stood Cherokee, Tyrone's class teacher, holding a classified folder in her hands.
"Glad you could make it," Piggy said. "YT has an anomaly to report. Go ahead."
YT looked at the gathered Executives. "I fought the boy. The scale of his output was entirely unnatural. Massive atmospheric displacement, hyper-compressed water. It was something else."
Cherokee set the folder on the steel table and opened it. The file read: 68% Positive Energy. Innate Ability: Continuous Energy Absorption.
Dan leaned over the table, frowning. "If his ability is that his energy constantly refills, couldn't he just brute-force his way into pulling off those high-level moves? He never runs dry."
"That is not how the physics work," Julian corrected smoothly. "Continuous absorption grants limitless stamina, not limitless capacity. Think of it structurally. A sixty-eight percent baseline dictates a strict ceiling on maximum output. A small engine physically cannot produce the thrust of a heavy jet, regardless of how quickly you replenish its fuel."
YT nodded. "Exactly. To output the kind of pressure I took from him, his baseline has to be drastically higher than sixty-eight."
Piggy turned away from the monitors, his goggles catching the dim light. "So the file is a fabrication. Someone altered his metrics to hide his actual ceiling."
The room fell into a heavy silence, considering the implications of an unregistered, high-tier positive asset hiding in plain sight.
"Then it's simple," Julian said, his eyes locking onto the open folder. "We need to confirm his actual numbers."