The field in front of the main dojo looked like freshly plowed farmland. Most of the grass was either gone or scorched black. After every practical session under Master Smith’s supervision, the entire area ended up torn apart, and afterward the sergeants would spend hours leveling the ground back into perfect shape with shovels.
On his assigned day, Ted demonstrated the monstrous power of the little spheres he proudly referred to as plasma.
On his day, Nick stood there with his brow furrowed so hard it looked painful, forcing his own shadow to twist and stretch across the sun-scorched lawn like a puddle of living black ink.
Louise, meanwhile, created her giant eye. The organoid drifted slowly and majestically above the field, trying to imitate some kind of meaningful activity, but Sam casually erased it from existence after only a couple of attempts. He lazily tossed a few energy blasts at it, and the floating construct burst apart, leaving behind nothing but a rapidly fading cloud of gray residue that smelled like burnt rubber. We never saw any real usefulness from that demonstration after that.
My scheduled hour had already passed. Considering the nature of my abilities, or more specifically, Selina’s complete lack of coherent instructions on how to apply my system in conventional hand-to-hand combat, Sam and I decided not to overcomplicate things. We spent the entire session grinding through brutal, exhausting S-Power control exercises.
And finally, it was Mary’s turn.
Our biggest mystery. The girl who always kept to herself and rarely bothered talking to anyone.
We cadets collapsed into the cool grass in a tight group near the wooden front of the dojo. Behind us, the sergeants stood in their usual formation like monuments. Their heavy military boots pressed into the turf with dull thuds while their sharp, attentive eyes tracked our every movement. They were here for supervision and for our safety, ready to intervene the instant someone’s superpower slipped out of control.
By that point, Sam had already unlocked our S-Power reserves again, but nobody rushed to practice air-walking. The technique demanded insane concentration and, worst of all, completely closed eyes. If we started levitating now, we would miss the entire show, and this definitely looked like something worth watching.
“Good afternoon, young lady,” Sam said with a dazzling smile, flashing perfectly white teeth. As always, the guy radiated that unstoppable California positivity and absolute self-confidence from a mile away. “So what technique’d you like to work on today?”
Mary did not even move. She stood across from him with her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her baggy training pants, staring at the master with a look cold enough to freeze steel.
“None,” she said flatly, lifting her chin slightly. “I wanna fight you. One on one. I’ve wanted to see how I measure up against an operative at your level for a long time.”
“What an interesting proposal.” Sam did not even raise an eyebrow. The fact that a twelve-year-old girl had just challenged him clearly did not bother him in the slightest. “But I should remind you, Mary, this isn’t exactly an ordinary martial arts lesson. We’re testing Professor Langstrom’s theoretical framework in practice today. And somehow I doubt your personal training plan included a section called ‘fight the instructor.’”
“None of her overcomplicated advice works under these field conditions,” Mary replied sharply, suddenly turning her head to look directly at me. For a split second, something almost resembling silent support flickered in her eyes. “I’m in exactly the same situation as Tom. My power doesn’t fit standard templates. So I wanna spend this time sharpening real combat skills instead of wasting it on theory.”
Sam theatrically pressed a hand against his chin, pretending to weigh the pros and cons. Although the truth was already written all over the face of that martial arts maniac. His eyes had lit up with excitement.
“All right, Mary. There’s logic in what you’re saying. I’m assuming you don’t plan on holding back your powers, so let’s establish the conditions for your victory. And tell me what handicaps I should give myself to even the odds. Maybe no S-Power shield? Or I fight with one arm disabled?”
“I don’t need handicaps,” she cut in immediately. “Everything stays fair. You win if you can last until I completely run out of energy.”
And in that exact second, Mary simply took off into the air.
No visible effort. No gusts of wind or roaring propulsion. Her body rose smoothly like a balloon, lifting off the ground and soaring a good hundred feet into the sky within moments until she hung motionless against the clear blue backdrop. Slowly, she pulled her right hand from her pocket and casually pointed an open palm toward Sam.
The instructor obviously understood exactly what he was dealing with. Without waiting for the attack, he launched himself sideways with a massive burst of S-Power, practically teleporting a hundred yards to the right. The acceleration was so violent that the air cracked where he had been standing a moment earlier.
Just in time.
The ground where Sam had stood suddenly caved inward with a deep, muffled boom. An invisible convulsion of colossal force ripped an enormous slab of earth from the soil along with roots and stones. A chunk the size of a large SUV shot upward into the air and, with a lazy flick of Mary’s hand as though she were conducting an invisible orchestra, was casually hurled aside before crashing apart across the training grounds.
“Well, there’re only three possibilities here,” Nick announced with the confidence of a seasoned expert. His own shadow twisted into increasingly bizarre and distorted shapes as he continuously burned off excess S-Power for training. “Either the girl manipulates gravitational fields, this is top-tier telekinesis, or she’s controlling air pressure.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions yet,” I replied while subconsciously activating my shield. My skin was instantly wrapped in that familiar faint tension as invisible armor coated my entire body for rapid energy burn. “This could turn out to be something way more specialized and versatile. Like mine.”
Meanwhile, the fight on the field had turned into a completely one-sided beating.
At least from the outside.
Mary hovered motionless in the sky while trying to trap Sam inside invisible crushing force. But there was a reason the man carried the title of master. He moved at absurd speed, blurring through space faster than the eye could comfortably follow. Honestly, even with my enhanced first-class vision, I could barely catch a clear glimpse of him during the rare fractions of a second when he paused before another explosive burst of movement.
The moment Mary realized she could not catch the agile instructor directly, she instantly switched tactics. Her fingers pressed tightly together into a rigid straight palm, and with obvious effort she slammed her arm downward like she was crushing an annoying insect against a table.
The air above the training grounds suddenly thickened.
Across a massive area directly beneath her, the grass, bushes, and top layer of soil compressed downward by nearly a full foot in an instant, as though an invisible titan’s hand had slammed into the earth. The ground groaned and cracked beneath the pressure.
“Definitely gravity,” Nick said confidently, shielding his eyes from the rising dust without taking them off the girl floating overhead.
This time Sam did not escape.
The wide-area attack engulfed him completely, smashing him face-first into the densely compressed earth with terrifying force. Cracks spread through the ground around him, but judging by the fact that our instructor had not turned into a pile of mangled flesh, his reflexes had worked perfectly. He had managed to raise a dense S-Power shield in time.
When the dust settled slightly, we could see that even his spotless white training gi remained clean.
Apparently, Mary had forced him into a classic war of attrition.
Things were getting genuinely interesting now. Whose tank would empty first? Mary attacking relentlessly from above, or Sam defending himself at the absolute limit?
Still, underestimating the master would have been a catastrophic mistake.
Suddenly, the ground directly beneath Sam’s flattened body exploded apart with a deafening crack. A deep crater opened underneath him as though someone had detonated a pound of dynamite underground. The instructor instantly dropped into the cavity, breaking free from the crushing gravitational pressure in one smooth motion, and immediately started throwing furious punches.
With every strike, focused S-Power projectiles blasted from his fists, drilling forward at machine-gun speed. They tore through the earth with shocking efficiency, carving out a human-sized underground tunnel in seconds. Sam was retreating beneath the surface, changing the entire vector of the battle.
Mary reacted instantly, shifting her attack pattern, but Sam operated on an entirely different level of perception.
He was much faster.
A dull crack split the air, and the instructor appeared directly behind her. Tight, concentrated S-Power projectiles erupted one after another from his fists, aimed straight at the girl’s shoulder blades.
However, the projectiles never reached her.
About half a foot from her back, space visibly distorted. The air rippled thickly, like heat waves rising from scorching asphalt in the middle of July, and the energy blasts became hopelessly trapped inside some invisible substance. They froze in place, vibrating violently and futilely trying to punch through the density of the field like sluggish flies stuck in a jar of fresh tar. Then, an instant later, Mary gave the slightest shrug of her shoulder, and some colossal inside-out force whistled upward, hurling the trapped energy bolts straight into the clouds above, where they harmlessly dissipated.
“Well, that clears it up. Mary’s surrounded by an absolute gravitational shield,” Nick declared with complete confidence. He adjusted the glasses sliding down his nose with the pompous air of a university professor and clasped his hands behind his back. “Magneto used to pull off tricks like that in the classic comics.”
I only nodded silently without taking my eyes off the training grounds. My body maintained its concentration, but inside me a strange, sticky sense of déjà vu kept growing. One obsessive question spun through my head: when the hell had this little girl managed to master tricks like that so perfectly? This was her first official lesson in practical superpower application at camp. More than that, the entire mechanic of bending space around herself reminded me far too much of something else.
Meanwhile, Mary had completely dropped the mask of lazy indifference.
The game was over.
With a sharp motion, she yanked her left hand out of her pocket, and the battle instantly escalated into something genuinely serious. Now the girl worked with both hands like an experienced orchestra conductor. Her left palm hammered invisible waves of crushing pressure into the ground with methodical force, making the soil beneath Sam’s feet sink inch by inch, while her right hand snapped through sharp grasping motions, trying to lock the instructor inside invisible jaws.
Sam had to go all out.
Just to avoid getting flattened beneath that insane steamroller, he zigzagged constantly, carving turns through three-dimensional space while somehow continuing to counterattack without interruption, launching dense volleys of S-Power projectiles from his fists. Every impact made the girl’s shield flare with dull light. Sam attacked with precision and relentless frequency. He was obviously trying to wear her down, fully aware that blocking his attacks was chewing through her energy reserve at a ridiculous rate.
“I’m getting tired of this,” Mary muttered, pressing her thin lips together in irritation.
She abruptly stabilized herself in midair, and her fingers joined together in front of her chest, forming a perfect triangle. The girl narrowed one eye as though she were lining Sam up through the scope of a sniper rifle using the improvised shape as a sight.
The atmospheric pressure over the training grounds dropped so violently that my ears instantly popped, while the grass below began whistling inward toward the center of her aim.
“I’m ending this now.”
“Stand down! The use of a gravitational bomb anywhere inside the training camp’s strictly prohibited under safety protocol!” Sam barked the order in an unusually harsh command voice that carried none of his usual California ease.
He instantly froze in the air, raising his right fist above his open left palm. The universal command gesture, ready to trigger a forced shutdown of every active S-Power reserve in camp the very next second.
“Fine,” the teenager clicked her tongue in annoyance, and a flash of pure teenage resentment crossed her eyes. Reluctantly, she relaxed her fingers and broke the triangle apart. The dense distortion surrounding her immediately faded away. “But keep this in mind, Master. In a real combat situation, that victory would’ve been mine.”
“Who knows, Mary, who knows,” Sam replied, immediately slipping back into his trademark sly grin.
He deliberately showed her the still-positioned fist and palm without another word, reminding the girl of one very simple truth: in a real fight against an operative of her level, he wouldn’t’ve wasted time on aerial acrobatics. He’d’ve simply shut her powers off in the very first second.
The rest of the training session no longer offered anything interesting from an analytical perspective. It became pure routine. Having lost the advantage of surprise, Mary stubbornly continued trying to flatten Sam with wide-area attacks, while he dodged every strike with the effortless precision of a professional boxer, maintaining perfect distance the entire time.
The ending arrived exactly as expected.
The girl’s internal tank simply ran dry.
Her S-Power finally burned out, and her body slowly drifted downward onto the trampled lawn, swaying gently like a falling autumn leaf.
I still had exactly one unit of free energy left in reserve, and I activated it without hesitation to scan our instructor’s reservoir. Clear digital interface numbers flashed before my eyes:
S-Power: 12590/19800
He had not even spent half his reserve.
For me, that became the final and absolute confirmation of his unquestionable victory in this round. And it was not even about the raw numbers. While we walked back, I kept replaying his movements in my head and gradually realized something important: Sam reproduced combat techniques more efficiently and more cleanly than anyone else in our group. Not a single wasted breath. Not one excessive movement. Every shift of balance, every impulse, everything had been refined to microscopic precision.
A true master.
The cadets headed down the gravel path toward the residential barracks in a scattered crowd. Mary walked slightly ahead of everyone else. Her shoulders were tense, and deep dissatisfaction with her own performance was written all over her face. That, however, did not stop the rest of the teenagers from immediately bombarding her with their expert opinions about the sparring match.
“Hey, shorty, you had our coach sweating like a pig at a slaughterhouse!” Ted exclaimed enthusiastically as he caught up to her and threw up both thumbs. “That fight was awesome. Though obviously, if I’d gone up against him and unleashed my powers at full blast, he’d’ve been begging me for mercy inside a minute.”
“Yeah, probably just so he wouldn’t die laughing right there on the field,” Mary replied without even turning toward him, her voice dripping with concentrated sarcasm. “Your plasma snowballs move so slowly and predictably that even a first grader could dodge them.”
“Pff, I was just taking it easy on him,” Ted replied without the slightest offense, casually throwing his hands behind his head while continuing beside her. “You’ll see when we finally spar. I won’t be playing around then. My plasma’ll burn straight through your gravity shield in the first few seconds.”
“In your dreams,” she snorted dryly, finally giving him a brief sideways glance. “We’re not fighting. Any battles between Corps cadets involving superpowers’re strictly forbidden.”
“How come?” Louise asked from slightly behind them, bundled inside her oversized jacket.
“Pretty obvious. So we don’t accidentally or intentionally cripple each other,” I answered for Mary.
My eyes drifted across the profile of the twelve-year-old girl who seemed far too familiar with the classified rules of this place. I narrowed my eyes slightly.
“So how do you know details like that, Mary? Nobody’s mentioned any of this during the general lectures yet.”
“I just do, that’s all,” she replied immediately, smoothly and expertly slipping away from the uncomfortable subject.
“Wait, Mary,” Nick jumped in from the other side, the pure excitement of scientific curiosity still burning in his eyes. “So it really is gravity manipulation, right? I guessed correctly?”
“Think whatever you want,” she replied indifferently without slowing her pace.
“Uh...” Nick scratched the tip of his nose awkwardly, clearly not expecting to slam into such a solid wall. Still, his enthusiasm refused to die. “Okay, but look. You can fly, you’ve got a passive omnidirectional shield, and those long-range pressure attacks.”
“So?”
“Then explain why you’re so obsessed with learning basic S-Power control techniques. What’s the point if your natural ability already does the same thing, only better?”
“Because absolutely anything can happen inside portals,” she answered.
That disturbing adult tone surfaced in her voice again. The voice of someone who had already seen the ugliest side of life.
“The wider your arsenal of basic skills is, the better your chances of surviving in hostile territory. Besides, Sam’s techniques’re excellent for developing precise micro-control over S-Power distribution throughout the body. The better your control becomes, the less energy you waste maintaining your primary shield.”
After that surprisingly weighty statement, our improvised conversation gradually faded out on its own. We had just reached the fork near the central distribution hub. The guys, along with Louise, turned toward the library while continuing to argue passionately about something among themselves, hoping to grab computers before evening curfew.
But I still had one question left.
The same question that had been nagging at the back of my mind throughout the entire second half of training.
“Hey, Mary,” I called quietly, taking two quick steps forward and catching up to her near the front steps before her thin figure disappeared behind the massive oak doors of the girls’ barracks. “Is your mother Megan Rogers?”