Chapter 20: Smells Like Teen Spirit.
『"With the lights out, it’s more dangerous..."』
Yelena addressed the entire room now, her voice loud enough for everyone to hear.
"This is what separates Dream Walkers from Shapers, and Shapers from Tyrants. Not raw power." She paused. "Understanding your weapon. Your enemy. Yourself."
She gestured to each of them in turn. "Today you learned something important. Not how to fight. You are still terrible at that." She gave a small shrug. "But you learned where you break. That is first step."
Amara pushed her aching body up and paused at the word.
Wait. Did she just say Tyrant?
Her exhausted brain tried to process that information. Yelena was Tyrant-class.
And they’d just spent the morning getting demolished by her like it was a casual training exercise.
"Dismissed," Yelena said abruptly. "Return to your quarters. Rest. Because training will only get worse from here."
"Oh good," Sophia said weakly from where she’d collapsed against the wall. "I was worried we might get a break or something like that."
***
They limped toward the elevator as a group, too exhausted for coherent conversation.
Amara’s legs felt like they were made of jelly. Her arms trembled with the effort of just existing. Angel’s Bane had demanifested the moment Yelena dismissed them, and she could feel its absence.
The elevator ride down was silent except for their collective heavy breathing and the occasional groan when someone shifted position wrong.
When the doors opened on their quarters level, they all shuffled directly into Hiro’s room, because it was closest to the elevator and none of them had the energy to walk any farther.
As soon as they got there, they immediately collapsed onto the nearest available surfaces.
Raj claimed half the bed with a grunt. Hiro face-planted into a beanbag chair next to his nightstand. Sophia lay flat on the floor like she’d been murdered and was awaiting the chalk outline. While Ethan sank into the other side of the bed with a sigh that came from somewhere deep in his soul.
Amara made it as far as the couch adjacent to where Ethan had collapsed before her legs gave out completely. She sat down harder than intended, and a small sound escaped her throat that might have been a whimper.
A sound she wasn’t going to acknowledge.
Hiro lay fully relaxed in the beanbag chair, staring at the ceiling and asked, "okay, so... is anyone else questioning their entire life choices right now? Also, why are you all in my room?"
"Closest to the elevator," Raj explained, still massaging his bruised arm where Yelena had paralyzed him.
Sophia had positioned herself with her legs up against the wall, hair spread out around her head in a blonde halo. "We got our butts absolutely handed to us today. Well, you all got destroyed. I got off with a gentle head tap and immediately noped out of there."
"Smart," Hiro muttered.
"You were awesome though, Amara," Raj said with admiration. "Seriously. You went toe-to-toe with a Tyrant."
Amara sat in perfect posture despite her exhaustion, though her hair was slightly disheveled. "Perhaps we should focus on what we learned today. Growth often comes through—"
"Nope!" Hiro interrupted, flailing an arm weakly. "No life lessons right now, Amara. My brain is currently operating on fumes and spite, and I need at least six hours before I can process anything you have to say."
Raj nodded in agreement. "I’m running on rage. But spite is almost as good as rage." He touched his arm again. "She fucking paralysed me..."
"Fair." Amara closed her eyes, feeling exhaustion pull at her like gravity, trying to drag her down into sleep right there on the couch without even making it back to her own room.
"That thing you did. With the sword..." Ethan said quietly.
Amara didn’t look at him when she responded, "I failed."
"What?"
"I failed. You had to save me," she repeated flatly.
"That’s not—" Ethan leaned forward. "Amara, You stood your ground against Yelena. Most Dream Walkers couldn’t survive that with months of training. What you did was... extraordinary."
Heat crept up Amara’s neck, and she hated that his praise affected her this much when she was too tired to maintain her usual defenses. "Well, you manifested a forcefield that somehow blocked out a vacuum, and everyone else would have performed better with more time. I’m not special."
"You are, though."
The words just hung there between them.
Then Sophia’s eyes shifted from Amara to Ethan as a knowing smirk pulled at her lips. "Okay, what’s happening here? Because the vibes are weird."
"Nothing’s happening," Amara said too quickly.
"Uh-huh." Sophia’s grin widened. "That’s exactly what people say when nothing’s happening."
Hiro sat up slightly, suddenly interested, even with his exhaustion. "Wait, did I miss something? When did—"
"You didn’t miss anything," Ethan cut him off, but his eyes never left Amara. "There’s nothing to miss."
"Right," Raj said slowly, not buying it for a second. "Nothing at all."
The group fell into uncomfortable silence, sensing they’d stumbled onto something neither Amara nor Ethan wanted discussed.
"I’m... gonna go take a shower," Sophia announced, pulling herself off the floor with a groan. "Hiro, you coming?"
"To join you?" He asked with an excited, dorky grin.
"Don’t push it," Sophia said, already leaving the room.
"It’s my room though," he mumbled as he extracted himself from the beanbag.
Raj surprisingly caught on and followed. Suddenly, the room was empty, leaving just Amara and Ethan.
"Hey," Ethan said quietly once the door closed.
Amara kept her eyes on the ceiling. "Don’t."
"Don’t what?"
"Whatever you’re about to say. Just... don’t."
Silence stretched between them for a moment. Then Ethan started.
"About last night—"
"Nothing happened last night," Amara interrupted, finally meeting his eyes. "We talked. That’s it."
"That wasn’t just talking, and you know it."
"Then what was it?" The question came out defensive.
Ethan opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. "I don’t know. But I know it wasn’t nothing."
Amara’s heart was doing that thing again, that too-fast rhythm that made her feel like she was losing control. "I can’t do this right now. I’m too exhausted."
"Okay." Ethan nodded, but disappointment was written across his face. "But we need to talk about it eventually."
"Maybe." Amara stood, every movement deliberate. "Or maybe we just pretend it didn’t happen and move on."
"Is that what you want?"
The question sat there, difficult to answer.
So Amara didn’t. Instead, she headed for the door, because staying would mean facing something she wasn’t ready to face.
"Amara," Ethan called after her.
She paused, hand on the door, but didn’t turn around.
"When I said you were extraordinary? I meant it. And not just because of the sword."
She left without responding, because if she stayed even one more second, she might say something she couldn’t take back.
***
[TOKYO, JAPAN - 11:47 PM LOCAL TIME]
Kenji Matsumoto stood on his apartment balcony, phone recording the rift that had been growing for three days.
The government said evacuate. The news said leave. Everyone said run.
But this was his home. His father’s home before him. He wasn’t going to abandon it because of some—
The rift tore open. Ripping apart like flesh as something fell through, and Kenji’s phone slipped from his fingers.
From the darkness of the dimensional tear, a creature descended like a harbinger of apocalypse, impossible to comprehend in a single glance as its form seemed to shift.
It plummeted toward the city center. And when it hit, holy shit...
The shockwave arrived first as windows exploded across forty city blocks simultaneously. Kenji was thrown backward into his apartment, glass shredding his clothes, his skin, his face.
Then there was the sound. A bass note so deep it wasn’t heard but felt, vibrating through bones, organs and skulls.
The shockwave rippled outward in concentric circles of destruction and skyscrapers that had stood for decades around him, crumbled like sandcastles before a tsunami.
Kenji pulled himself to the shattered balcony edge, bleeding, deafened, and barely conscious.
Tokyo metropolis was just... gone.
Where Shibuya had stood, there was now a crater three kilometers wide. The creature rose from the center, and its roar shattered windows five miles away.
And Kenji’s last coherent thought before shock took him was simple:
We should have run.
***
Across the Pacific, alarms began screaming in Institute Command.
The First Malice had arrived.
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
AMARA MURRAY | The Sword
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Spirit Weapon: Angel’s Bane (Sword of Truth)
Rank: Dream Walker
Ascendant Sigil: ▮ (1 Bar - Right Ribs)
Abilities Unlocked:
┣ Lie Detection
┣ Blade Memory
┣ Shockwave Slash
┣ Intent Sight
┣ Adaptive Combat Evolution
┣ Selective Slash
┣ ??? [LOCKED]
Status: Exhausted, Accomplished, Avoiding Feelings
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
ETHAN BASS | The Shield
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Spirit Weapon: Bastion (Shield of Faith)
Rank: Shaper
Ascendant Sigil: ▮▮ (2 Bars - Left Shoulder)
Abilities Unlocked:
┣ Resonance with the rest of the weapons
┣ Force-Field
┣ Belief Barrier
┣ Multi-Layer Barriers
┣ Force Construct
┣ ??? [LOCKED]
Status: Protective, Worried, Words Left Unsaid
Comments