Kai had been alive in his new world for less than twenty-four hours and already hated algebra more than death itself.
He slouched in his seat, sunglasses on, chin propped in his palm while the classroom clock ticked with the energy of a smug metronome. Ms. Alvarez filled the board with lines and slopes and letters that pretended to be numbers.
"Remember," she said, "slope-intercept form is—"
Kai's pencil snapped. Again.
He stared at the two halves like they'd betrayed him.
From his headphones, Ava chirped in his ear. "That's number four. You are, in statistical terms, underperforming the average pencil user."
"In my defense," he whispered, lips barely moving, "I've never had to calculate y equals mx plus why am I not punching through buildings right now."
"Stop reinforcing your grip by accident. Or I'm scheduling you for remedial fine-motor control."
Kai sighed, fished a mechanical pencil from his bag, and clicked it as gently as humanly—no, anime-humanly—possible.
A paper airplane bonked the back of his head.
He turned slowly. Three guys—the universal triangle of gym-class confidence—grinned like hyenas. One of them, a tall kid in a letterman jacket, tapped his own sunglasses. "Hey, Matrix, you know it's not sunny inside, right?"
Kai smiled pleasantly. "Doctor's orders. Sensitive eyes."
"Uh-huh." The guy leaned back, not quite satisfied. "Creepy eyes, more like."
Ava's voice was dry. "He is three seconds from inventing a new slur for people with pretty irises."
"Pipe down," Kai murmured. "Tutorial level diplomacy."
Ms. Alvarez turned. "Mr. Gojo? Problem?"
"No, ma'am," Kai said. "Just appreciating linear functions."
"Good. Appreciate them silently."
He did. For approximately twelve seconds.
Then the bell saved his soul.
Hallway: Cutscene
Kai moved with the crowd. Lockers slammed. Backpack straps creaked. The school smelled like pencil shavings and teenager. He kept his glasses on, head slightly down, sliding around knots of students with lazy, dancer-like steps that he was ninety percent sure were just Limitless doing subtle work.
"Schedule?" he asked under his breath.
Ava projected her voice like a polite thought. "Homeroom done. Algebra done. Chemistry next, then lunch. Gym after."
"Gym," he repeated flatly.
"Please refrain from demonstrating your impenetrability to rubber balls again."
"I panicked," Kai hissed.
"You smirked."
"Panic smirk."
"Mhm."
They passed a wall TV news ticker. DAILY PLANET: LEXCORP TO OPEN EAST RIVER TECH HUB; STAR LABS TRIALS NEW CLEAN-ENERGY REACTOR IN METROPOLIS. Another headline crawled under it: BATSIGHTING RUMORS IN GOTHAM RISE; NYPD DENIES 'VIGILANTE COPYCATS'.
Kai's mouth did a small, giddy twitch. Different city, sure. Same universe. His universe now.
"Eyes front," Ava warned. "You're practically vibrating."
"I am vibrating," he said. "With restrained excellence."
"You're vibrating with the attention span of a raccoon."
"Compliment accepted."
Chemistry: Controlled Experiments (Allegedly)
Mr. Halvorsen rolled in a cart that had seen things. "Lab day," he announced. "Acids and bases. Safety goggles on. Long hair tied back. No shenanigans, Mr. Delgado."
Kai took a station solo near the back. Perks of being the quiet orphan kid: people let the empty seat stay empty.
"Reminder," Ava said. "Do not use Infinity to block corrosives. If you slip, you will create a very expensive educational incident."
"Relax," Kai whispered. "I'm a professional."
He wasn't.
But he was careful. He measured. He poured. When a splash arced higher than expected, his body hummed and the droplet slowed barely—just enough for him to tilt the beaker out of the way. It hit the bench with a mean little sizzle. No one noticed.
Ava noticed. "Uncontrolled reflex. Good rescue. Now do it again on purpose."
He tried. A flicker of pressure, an almost taste of distance. It lasted the span of a blink, then snapped.
"Think in layers," Ava coached. "A microscopic gap between you and contact. Breath in, establish boundary, breath out, hold it."
He breathed. The layer held longer. He smiled. It faded. He scowled.
"Progress," Ava said. "A competent toddler could not have done that."
"You really know how to motivate a guy."
"Gold star given."
Across the room, Mr. Halvorsen boomed, "Who put baking soda in the vinegar without goggles?" A geyser answered him.
Kai didn't flinch. His Infinity did, for a heartbeat—an instinctive capsule around his eyes—and then it was gone, like a muscle twitch he hadn't meant to flex.
He exhaled and wrote in his notebook, a private header: Infinity: Reflex Layer (0.3–0.5s). Goal: 3s stable.
The letters slanted with excitement.
Lunch: Fuel and Philosophy
The cafeteria was a loud rectangle. Kai bought something that claimed to be a chicken sandwich but spiritually wanted to be a hockey puck. He sat alone by a window. He didn't mind alone. Alone meant he could talk to his phone without looking like he was auditioning for an exorcism.
"Alright, coach," he whispered. "What's next?"
"Three tracks," Ava said. "One, cursed energy flow. You're wasting most of what you generate. Think laminar, not turbulent. Two, Infinity micro-control. On/off is cute; throttling is king. Three, One For All management. We will not blow your arm off today."
Kai flexed a finger. Electricity-like tingles ran through the tendons and into his wrist. "What about Six Eyes? Can I… I don't know, zoom?"
"Half-day later. You lack the discipline to not drown in the information. We'll start with gentle perception tests after school."
He looked at the plastic tray, at the rectangular mystery brownie that had arrived as part of a federally funded prank. "Can my fourth track be eating something edible?"
"Your indestructible infinite-battery phone contains every cooking show ever made."
"So… no."
"So no."
He grinned. "Fine. After school: secret base."
"You don't have a secret base."
"I will by the time the sun sets."
"Statistically improbable."
"Watch me."
"I literally do."
He ate the sandwich anyway. It tasted like victory flossed with cardboard.
Gym: The Ball, the Boy, the Barrier
Coach Donnelly had a whistle that could cut glass and a mustache that could deflect bullets.
"Basketball scrimmage!" he barked. Teams formed. Kai found himself reluctantly holding a jersey that suggested he was about to embarrass himself.
"Do not use Infinity," Ava said. "Do not use reinforcement. Do not jump from the free-throw line because you can."
"I've never done that," he said, shocked, and then—"Okay, I thought about it."
He played badly on purpose. Too slow. Too human. But when a pass came in hot—an accidental bullet—his body reacted the way it wanted. The ball slowed. The air thickened. A lazy, invisible cushion kissed the rubber.
Kai forced the layer off and let the ball smack into his hands, pretending to fumble. He felt eyes on him. The letterman jacket guy snorted.
"Nice hands, Matrix."
"Thanks," Kai said. "I moisturize."
He bricked a layup on purpose and spent the next minute explaining to himself the philosophical difference between hiding and sandbagging. He decided he'd coined a new martial art: Gojo-style Social Stealth.
Coach Donnelly blew the whistle. "Gojo, hustle with the hustle next time!"
"Yessir," Kai said, and hustled at a speed legally classified as amble.
Ava hummed. "You are going to slip in public sooner or later."
"That's a later problem."
She didn't disagree. She just filed the prediction away for when it would be most annoying.
After School: Acquisition of a Secret Base (Speedrun)
He cut right after the final bell and let the city swallow him. East River wind. Gull cries. The taste of salt, diesel, hot dog stands. He checked alleyways with quick looks that weren't quite Six Eyes and weren't quite normal sight, a sort of sensing the way you sense a curb even before you see it.
He found the warehouse an hour later—corrugated metal, big doors, a dozen broken windows like a grin missing teeth. A fenced lot beside it opened onto a sloped concrete apron that kissed the water. It had a view of a rusted barge that had decided retirement suited it.
"Surveillance?" he asked.
"Blind zones," Ava said. "No cameras in line of sight. Minimal foot traffic. Acoustics are… echoey."
"I like echoey," he said, and shouldered through a door whose lock had opinions but no structural integrity.
Inside: dust, beams, birds that were either sleeping or judging him, and a grid of sunlight stripes on the floor.
"Welcome," he said, arms out. "Home gym."
"You have no weights," Ava said.
He held up his fists. "I brought two."
"Tragic."
He laughed and dropped his backpack. The echo made it sound like someone else was laughing with him. That felt good.
Training: Three Tracks and One Idiot Track One: Cursed Energy Flow
"Breathing," Ava said. "Cadence. Fill, hold, move."
He breathed. He pictured energy like blue-black smoke running through tubes. When he imagined it wrong, it flooded his hands and tingled in his fingertips until the feeling became itch and then shake. When he imagined it right, it went quiet and strong, like a current under ice.
"Good," Ava said. "Now trickle to your palm and hold it there, constant pressure."
He did. The air fuzzed at the edges of his hand, lazy lightning, more sound than light.
"Now shape it into a line."
He tried. It sputtered like a sparkler. He snorted, giddy.
"Again," Ava said, patient and relentless.
He did it until his shoulders ached like he'd been swimming laps in a pool filled with espresso.
Track Two: Infinity Micro-Control
He tossed a bolt at himself. It slowed. He kept breathing. It slowed more. It touched a shell of not-quite there and decided physics was a suggestion. He held it, jaw clenched, eyes soft, not looking so much as allowing.
"Three seconds," Ava said. "Three point two. Three point four—"
A gull screamed. He flinched. The bolt tapped his chest. It didn't hurt. It offended him.
He picked it up and tried again. And again. The fourth time, his nose itched, and he refused to scratch it until the bolt had hung, spinning, for four seconds and change.
"Four point six," Ava said. "I will begrudgingly call that progress."
"I will graciously accept your begrudging."
"Begrudgingly accepted."
Track Three: One For All Management
"Do not go above one percent," Ava said.
"What if—"
"One. Percent."
He nodded and flexed his hands, pulling that other current up. It didn't feel like cursed energy at all. Cursed energy was heat and grit and coal. This was sun and wire and something under his skin that wanted to be lightning.
He let it run down his arms in a threadbare jacket of power, just enough to hum. He stepped. The concrete under his sneaker whispered a crack.
"Half percent," Ava said. "Because you do not know how heavy your bones are yet."
He laughed. "That sentence makes no sense and also all the sense."
"Welcome to training."
He jogged a straight line, careful. He punched the air once, slow, and the air hiccuped around his fist. He wanted to punch a wall. He compromised by punching a ghost wall that his brain drew and his body believed in.
"Posture," Ava said. "You're boosting your shoulders when you should be loading your hips."
"Wow," he said. "You are a coach."
"I have watched seventeen hundred hours of martial arts tutorials."
"And you could do that again for fun."
"And I will if you keep being smug."
"Impossible," he said, and almost fell over when he laughed mid-step, power sputtering in a strobe.
They worked until sweat ran down his spine and his shirt clung to him and his hair looked like it had declared independence from combs as a concept. His sunglasses slid down his nose; he pushed them back with the back of his wrist.
"Hydrate," Ava ordered.
He chugged water like he'd invented thirst.
"Again," she said.
He grinned and did it again.
Six Eyes: Peeking Without Drowning
Dusk pressed against the broken windows. The beams threw long rectangles across the floor like lanes in a pool.
"Perception drills," Ava said. "Lift the glasses. One eye only. Ten seconds. Read the number on that shipping crate."
He raised the glasses with two fingers, lifted his right eye to the world like flipping open a secret hatch.
Everything sharpened. The world grew pores. Dust hung as a galaxy of tiny planets. The grain in the wood shouted its age in rings he could count. He tasted rust as a color.
"Breathe," Ava said. "Ten… nine…"
"6… 2… 1… 4," he whispered, blinking tears from the edges as his brain tried to both look and understand.
"Down," Ava ordered.
He dropped the glasses. The world softened. He exhaled a shaky laugh.
"Again," she said, kinder now.
He did it again, this time counting the pigeons on the far beam and the beats of their wings. He did it until the ache behind his eyes moved from stabbing to dull, until the panic at the too much turned into a kind of greedy calm.
"Enough," Ava said. "Do not chase a migraine on day one."
"Day… one point five," he corrected.
"Do not chase pedantry either."
He flipped her off lovingly with the back of his hand and slid the glasses back into place fully, grateful for the shade.
Walk Home: The City Asks Its First Question
Night fell like someone dimmed a slider. The air cooled and smelled like rain that hadn't decided if it was going to happen. Kai slung his backpack and cut back toward his neighborhood, loose and buoyant and a little sore in ways that would be heroic in the morning.
"Report card?" he asked.
"Cursed energy flow: C plus. Infinity: B minus. One For All: C but alive. Six Eyes: pass for effort, fail for ambition."
"So like… honor roll if the system valued vibes."
"You get a sticker."
"Is the sticker edible?"
"It is smug."
"Perfect."
He turned onto a block where the streetlights had decided they were more spiritual concept than infrastructure. Voices crawled out of a side alley—sharp, older, mean. A smaller voice broke in the middle of a word.
Kai stopped. The night pressed in.
He leaned half a step, peered. Two men. One heavy with a shaved head and a neck tattoo that suggested poor life choices; one skinny with jittery knees and a knife that looked like it had watched too many movies. Between them, a kid—backpack, hoodie, maybe thirteen—pinned against brick.
"C'mon," Knife said. "Hand it over."
"I—I told you, there's nothing—"
Shaved Head slapped the wall next to the kid's head. The sound did an ugly echo.
Kai's hand curled around the strap of his bag. Infinity hummed, an instinctive no. One For All rose in him like a dog hearing a back door click.
"You are the only one here who can stop this," Ava said, quiet and plain.
He didn't move.
Excitement had been easy all day. Power had been fun. This was different in a way that turned his stomach cold. This had edges you could cut yourself on.
He didn't want to be a hero. Not as a decision. Not before he'd even met his own bones in a fight.
"Options," he whispered.
"Distraction," Ava said instantly. "Noise behind them. Light. Trip."
Kai scanned. A crushed soda can near a storm drain. He flicked two fingers, focused thin, clean. The can hopped, then shot across the alley and clanged against a dumpster with the confidence of a grenade. Both men jerked.
"Hey!" Knife snapped, half turning.
The kid ran like he'd trained for it. Past them, past Kai, feet smacking pavement in a skip-pattern of panic and instinct. Gone.
Knife swore. Shaved Head stepped forward, scanning for the source of the noise. His eyes slid past Kai twice, not registering him as anything but a skinny kid with a backpack and shades.
Kai deliberately shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and leaned on a lamppost that didn't work.
Knife glared. "You see anything?"
Kai tilted his head. "Just two grown men trying to rob the concept of childhood. Five out of ten, would not recommend."
"Funny guy," Shaved Head growled, stepping closer.
"Uh-oh," Ava murmured.
"Relax," Kai breathed. He let Infinity kiss the air around him, a whisper-thin layer, nothing flashy. He let One For All not rise. He felt his heart, felt how small and loud it was.
Shaved Head got close enough to bump him shoulder-to-shoulder—the kind of bump that, if you were normal, made you wobble. Kai didn't wobble.
Shaved Head frowned, confused at physics, then sneered anyway. "Beat it, sunglasses."
Kai smiled without teeth. "Have a safe evening, gentlemen."
He walked. Not fast. Not slow. Just like a guy with a somewhere to be and no time to waste on side quests.
They didn't follow.
He breathed again five steps later and hated that he'd been holding it.
"You could have ended it decisively," Ava said. Not a lecture. A truth.
"I did," he said. "Decisive is everyone going home with their bones in the same arrangement."
A pause as she considered that. "Your pulse is high."
"Cardio," he said lightly. It sounded thinner in his mouth than it had in his head.
"Next time," Ava said, "you will have less time to think."
He nodded once for nobody and kept moving. The city had asked him a question. He had given it a half-answer.
Home: A Sticker and a Schedule
He collapsed onto his mattress and stared at the hairline crack in the ceiling that looked a little like a lightning bolt and a little like a vein.
"Status," he said.
Ava projected a checklist to the phone screen. It glowed like a to-do list for a demigod.
Cursed Energy Flow — hold steady stream for 10s (today: 4–6s).
Infinity — maintain passive layer for 5s (today: 4.6s).
One For All — 0.5% mobility drills, posture correction (today: survived).
Six Eyes — 10s peek, no migraine (today: watery eyes, small headache, moral victory).
"Add an item," he said. "Social Stealth: don't be weird in gym."
"Impossible goal added."
He laughed and rolled onto his side. His muscles hummed with the good ache. His brain hummed with the harder one.
"Set a training block tomorrow," he said. "After school. Warehouse. Same plan, but… more."
"Scheduled," Ava said. "And Kai?"
"Yeah?"
"You did something tonight."
He stared at the crack until it turned into a river delta.
"Yeah," he said softly. "I guess I did."
"Stickers unlocked," Ava said, deadpan. "Two for restraint. One for flair."
"Put them on my emotional fridge."
"Done."
He closed his eyes. For a second he saw a wheel, garish and golden, slowing over fate. For a second he heard a laugh and ur welcome scrawled across the inside of his skull. For a second he saw two men who could have been worse and a kid who had run fast enough.
He breathed.
"Tutorial level," he murmured.
"Tutorial level," Ava agreed.
The city breathed with him, like it always had, like it always would. Somewhere, lights went off. Somewhere, sirens went on. Somewhere, a headline got written in a tone between hope and hazard.
He slept, and in his sleep he didn't fight anything, which felt like a kind of mercy.
Morning would come. Training would come. At some point, choice would come again, and he wouldn't be able to half-answer.
But that was later.
For now, he had a secret base, a schedule, and a sticker he'd pretend not to care about.
For now, he had a life to learn how to live.
For now, he had the tutorial.