Chapter 4
The impact sent Flash hurtling backward through the air, his body crashing hard into the wall behind him. A table stood there, stacked with books, and it collapsed beneath him in a sharp crack of splintering wood. Pages scattered across the floor as Flash slid through the debris, dust rising around him.
He looked up.
His breathing was controlled. His eyes, steady.
A slow smile crept across his face.
"Really strong, you are."
The words barely finished leaving his mouth before he vanished.
He reappeared directly in front of Kai in the same instant, his fist already moving — a punch thrown with everything behind it, a wall of force compressed into a single knuckle. It connected with Kai's face with a sound like a thunderclap. The ground beneath them didn't just crack. It shattered. The entire section of floor gave way under the brutal force of the impact, tiles fragmenting outward in every direction, a crater forming where Kai's body met the earth.
But Kai didn't let go.
The moment Flash's fist connected, Kai's hands were already moving. Rather than absorbing the blow and retreating, he did the opposite — he clamped down on the arm, keeping the fist lodged against his face, refusing to let Flash withdraw it. His leg swung in a tight, rotating arc around Flash's extended arm, winding around it like a lock.
Flash reacted fast. He lifted Kai clean off the ground, arm rising as he prepared to slam him down with full force.
The only thing that met the floor was Flash's own hand.
Kai was already gone.
For a single, disorienting moment, Flash didn't know where he was. He turned his head — nothing. He scanned left, right — nothing. His instincts screamed, but by the time the warning reached his body, it was already too late.
He felt it in his skull first.
Kai appeared behind him without a sound, and the punch landed flush against the back of Flash's head with the weight of something final. Flash's entire body dropped like a demolished structure, crashing face-first into the already-broken floor, splitting the concrete further, sending cracks web-crawling outward across the hallway in every direction.
---
Kai reset his stance.
His front foot slid forward in a smooth, measured glide. His shoulders tightened. His lead arm snapped straight outward — the jab firing like a released spring, elbow tucked close, knuckles traveling in a perfect line before snapping back to guard without a wasted inch of movement. Then his rear heel twisted against the ground. His hips rotated sharply, torso following through as the cross surged forward, shoulder rolling over the strike, arm extending fully before recoiling back to reset his guard with clean, practiced precision.
He pivoted on the ball of his lead foot. His torso turned sideways, his arm carving a tight arc — the hook whipped across in a compact horizontal swing, every ounce of its force drawn from the hips, his balance staying rooted through the motion. His knees dipped briefly before rising in one fluid surge, and the uppercut launched upward from below, powered through his legs and driven by his core in a straight vertical line.
He didn't stop there.
His head tilted slightly off-center. His torso leaned just enough to shift his entire alignment — the slip-counter followed without hesitation, his body weaving smoothly before another straight punch fired cleanly along the new angle, cracking against Flash's jaw with devastating accuracy.
By the end of it, Flash was bleeding.
---
Flash didn't fall back. He didn't retreat.
He lunged forward.
His hand shot out and seized Kai by the jaw — fingers locking around bone — and before Kai could respond, Flash's other fist came down directly on the top of his skull with a force that had no business belonging to anything human. The blow was catastrophic. Blood ran immediately, hot and fast. The impact launched Kai off his feet and sent him flying across the hallway, his body crashing through the wall at the far end in a burst of plaster and broken drywall.
He hit the ground on the other side.
He tried to lift his head.
Flash was already there.
The kick connected before Kai even finished raising his eyes, the force of it sending him slamming back into the wall he had just broken through, cracking the remaining structure further. Before he could drop, Flash was on him — fists and boots moving in rapid sequence, hammering into his torso, his ribs, his shoulders, each strike landing with the kind of precision that comes from something beyond training.
Kai bled more. The hallway was painted with it.
But he didn't stop.
Through the pain, through the blood running into his eye and the taste of copper sitting heavy on his tongue, Kai's arm moved. His fist caught Flash across the face — a single, clean punch that snapped the man's head sideways and sent him staggering. Before Flash could recover, Kai grabbed him by the face, pivoted, and drove him down into the floor with full force. He followed immediately with a punch straight into Flash's nose, the impact crunching through the tile beneath them.
Flash was up before the dust settled.
Then something changed.
He moved differently. The word *fast* stopped covering it. He appeared at Kai's side, and the punch to his stomach was a blur. Then the other side. Then behind him. Then in front. Then high, then low. Flash cycled through angles like a machine running a sequence, each strike arriving from a direction that shouldn't have been reachable in the time available. From every angle, every side, every opening — devastating, precise, continuous.
Kai bled from places he hadn't been aware of getting hit.
He took a breath.
One slow, deliberate breath.
And then he moved.
---
His lead foot stepped outward, hips twisting sharply as his rear leg whipped through the air — the roundhouse kick carved a wide, sweeping arc, shin cutting forward with full-body rotation behind it before snapping back into stance. His balance shifted smoothly into the next motion, knee rising straight upward before his leg thrust outward like a piston, hips locking cleanly into the teep.
He was already moving into the next sequence.
His shoulders tightened as his torso rotated, forearm turning so the point of his elbow traced a sharp, deliberate line through the air — the elbow slash sliced forward in a short, precise arc. Without pause, he anchored his weight and drove his knee upward in a direct vertical surge, hips thrusting forward with total commitment. His feet shifted in a sudden reversal of stance — the switch kick followed instantly, hips snapping with explosive force as the new rear leg spun through a powerful roundhouse.
He kept building.
His knee lifted sharply toward his chest before his leg snapped outward — the front kick launched in a straight line, foot driving forward before retracting cleanly beneath him. His body shifted sideways, supporting foot turning out, frame aligning as the side kick extended powerfully, heel driving straight ahead while his spine stayed rigid and centered.
Then his shoulders twisted backward before snapping forward in a single decisive motion — the reverse punch fired straight ahead, hips rotating to channel every ounce of momentum into the strike. His hand opened immediately into the knife-hand strike, fingers locked tight, slicing downward in a clean arc. His torso rotated halfway as his knee lifted once more — the back kick surged straight behind him, heel thrusting outward while his hips locked firmly into place.
The combination was relentless. Precise. Unbroken.
---
From the side of the hallway, a sharp whistle broke through the chaos.
"*Whoa!* Attaboy!"
The pink-haired boy was practically vibrating where he stood, bouncing on his heels with an enormous grin across his face. Around him, students had gathered along the walls — no one interfering, no one moving, just watching with wide eyes and held breath as the two figures destroyed the building around them. Even Flash's friends had stopped trying to look uninvested. They were watching just as hard as everyone else.
The pink-haired boy spun toward his golden-haired companion.
"Hey, um — is that just me, or are you also thinking Flash is using his powers right now? Like, you know — *his* powers. His actual powers."
The golden-haired boy stared at the wreckage in front of them. Chunks of wall. Cracked flooring. Blood on the tile. Two figures moving so fast the air between them seemed to crackle.
"Obviously," he muttered. "We didn't notice that just now?" He shook his head slowly. "Whoever that man is — he's pushing Flash to his *limit*. And I need someone to explain to me how a human being is taking hits like that and still throwing them right back."
Nobody had an answer.
The fight didn't care.
---
They crashed through the classroom door.
It didn't open. It simply stopped existing as a barrier when the two bodies hit it at full force, carrying the fight through desks and chairs and scattered textbooks, the violence continuing without interruption, not even acknowledging the change in scenery.
Flash struck. Kai answered.
Kai stepped onto the surface of a low desk, sole pressing firmly into the wood as his hips rotated — the roundhouse whipped across the classroom in a wide arc, his leg traveling through open space above scattered chairs before snapping back as he dropped between the rows. His foot found the lower edge of a window frame, body aligning through the supporting leg as the teep launched outward from that anchored position, hips locking as his leg drove straight toward Flash in a clean, piston-like line.
He gripped the back of a chair to anchor his stance and drove his knee upward with full force — the strike surging vertically, powered by the pull of his planted arm. Papers and notebooks scattered off nearby desks as his torso twisted, forearm sliding across the surface as his shoulder drove forward, the elbow cutting in a short, precise arc through the space between them.
His feet shifted rapidly along the desk row, stance reversing in a sudden flash — the switch kick followed in the same breath, hips snapping with explosive force as his leg spun through a tight, powerful arc that connected with Flash's jaw.
The impact carried Flash back through the classroom door, out into the hallway, where he slid along the floor and finally came to a stop.
The silence lasted about one second.
Flash stood up.
He rolled his neck slowly. Then he looked at Kai, and whatever had been controlled in his expression before was gone now. His eyes were red. Not angry — red. Something in them had shifted.
"You're gonna *die*," he said, his voice barely above a breath. "You dumbass. I'm going to *kill* you."
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a set of brass knuckles, sliding them over his fingers with calm, deliberate ease.
Kai looked at them.
"Weapon," he said flatly. "I don't really like weapons."
Flash's smile was slow and sharp.
"Oh, you're not gonna *like* what I'm about to use."
He raised his fist, knuckles pointed directly at Kai. Then something happened to the brass metal. It began to shift — the surface rippling, changing into something that had no clean name, no familiar category. It started to glow. A deep, building luminescence gathered around his fist, the air around it warping slightly as pressure accumulated, energy coiling inward before the release.
The hallway hummed.
The glow intensified.
Flash's arm tensed as he prepared to fire.
Kai moved.
Not back. *Forward.*
In the fraction of a second before the blast released, Kai closed the distance entirely and drove a straight, brutal punch directly into Flash's hand— the point of impact landing exactly where the energy had been building, the collision meeting the forming beam head-on.
What followed was not a sound so much as a *fact*.
A sharp, blinding white light consumed the entire school — windows, walls, ceilings, all of it swallowed in a single breathless instant. There were no shapes left. No shadows. No edges. Just the light.
And then the boom arrived.
It hit the chest like a physical thing, rattling bones, rattling glass, rattling the teeth of every student pressed against the hallway walls. The sound rolled outward and didn't seem to end so much as slowly exhaust itself against the world.
Then silence.
Then the dust.