Kenji felt a bead of sweat roll down his neck. The rooftop felt smaller than usual, the humming of the city below fading into the background as Hana's gaze bored into him. He looked at the phone in her hand, then at his own pocket, where his toasted, half-melted device sat like a lead weight.
"Hana, you've been watching way too many 'Vanguard Reveal' clips," Kenji said, forced a nervous laugh that sounded only mostly fake. He pulled out his ruined phone—the one he'd fried that morning—and held it out with a sheepish shrug. "Look at this piece of junk. I tried to overclock the battery last night using a DIY fast-charger I saw on a forum. I think I basically turned it into a small EMP."
Hana squinted at the charred plastic. "A DIY charger? Kenji, that 'glitch' in class was identical to the energy signature at the bank. My analysis software doesn't lie."
"Software can be tricked by proximity," Kenji doubled down, stepping closer and leaning into his 'tech-geek' persona. "That Agent was using a high-gain scanner. When my phone's lithium-ion core started leaking induction current right as she walked by, the interference pattern probably spiked. It's basic electromagnetic interference—EMI. It's not a superpower, Hana; it's just really bad hardware."
The Skepticism
Leo, catching the drift, jumped in with a perfect assist. "He's not lying. I told him that capacitor was going to blow. He's been obsessed with trying to get his phone to charge in under three minutes ever since he started playing that high-spec mobile RPG. He's not a hero, he's just a fire hazard."
Hana looked from the burnt phone to Kenji's face. She stayed silent for a long time, the wind whipping her hair. Finally, she lowered her phone.
"So, the ozone smell?" she asked, her voice softer but still guarded.
"I use a heavy-duty ionizer in my room because of my allergies," Kenji lied smoothly. "The smell sticks to my clothes. If I were a superhero, do you really think I'd still be failing Physics?"
Hana sighed, a mix of disappointment and lingering doubt crossing her face. "I guess. It's just... the city needs someone who isn't a corporate billboard. I wanted it to be real." She turned and walked toward the door, stopping for a second. "Fix your phone, Kenji. Before you actually blow up the school."
The Real Threat
As soon as the door clicked shut, Kenji slumped against the railing, his legs turning to jelly. "That was too close, Leo. Way too close."
"You're a terrible liar, but you're a great tech-bullsh*tter," Leo gasped, clutching his chest. "But we have a bigger problem. Look."
Leo turned his tablet around. He had bypassed the local police encryption and tapped into a private server. On the screen was a grainy, thermal-vision image of the bank from last night. It wasn't a police file; it was watermarked with a stylized "P" wrapped in silver chains.
"The Puppet Master," Kenji whispered.
"He wasn't just robbing the bank for money," Leo said, scrolling through the data. "He was testing the 'Grounder' against local response times. And you didn't just stop a robbery; you interfered with a live experiment. Look at the bottom of the file."
There was a red box highlighted around the blurry image of the Red Blur. Underneath, a single command was typed in a cold, digital font:
VARIABLE IDENTIFIED. INITIATE RECLAMATION PROTOCOL: PHASE 1.
"Phase 1?" Kenji asked.
Suddenly, the school's emergency sirens began to wail. Not the fire alarm—the High-Alert Meta-Human Intrusion siren. From the rooftop, they looked down at the main entrance. A black van had pulled up, and four figures in heavy, reinforced armor were stepping out. They weren't police, and they weren't Vanguards.
They were The Reclaimers.