There was one thing that Naomi Southfire did not like, and that was obsession. Unfortunately, her best combat student was obsessive. It wasn’t usually bad because for all his fun and joviality, Diret was not easily impressed. It was in something he had said once. He could acknowledge that something was impressive, but that did not mean that he had to be impressed by it. But his obsessiveness came from curiosity and intrigue.
First you had to get his attention. The last time she’d seen it was in last year’s inter-school combat tournament. There was a boy in another school who Diret claimed was not using all his skills. So, Diret had focused on the boy, even in team battles where there were stronger opponents that they required him to take down.
In the end, he had been right. The problem was that a fight he could’ve ended in five minutes ended up being stretched out to almost thirty. Why? Because he wanted to make the boy use the skill—he wanted to bring out his full potential in the tournament.
It was a major reason for their inability to come out on top in the tournament.
Now he was doing the same thing with Melmarc Lockwood. According to him, Melmarc was a bigger threat than his prodigy of a brother in the combat department. Ark moved like he was made for it. He was almost like Diret, comfortable in conflict and violence and yet fully in control. Then with his unique class, he was also quite strong.
As the instructor of the combat team, her job was not to ignore everyone to focus on the one potentially unique case. It was to focus on every member of the team. If there was one diamond in the rough that she could not see, it was a worthy sacrifice to the others that she could see.
She held back a sigh as she watched Diret and Melmarc’s spar continue to go on for longer than it should’ve. Handicapped as he was by the restriction on the use of skills and the size difference, she knew Diret could finish the fight if he really put his mind to it. The boy was sharp and quick and had a combat IQ most of his peers did not come close to possessing. Not even in the combat team—except Ark Lockwood.
The others finished their sparring session and were now standing, watching how Diret was going to finish it. The eyes of the first year students that had been happy when Melmarc had beaten Sanders a few days ago were now hoping on Diret to do the same, to put down Melmarc Lockwood. Those eyes said a lot, and Naomi knew that some of the students present would not remain members of the combat team by the end of the academic session.
The fight moved and changed. Diret said Melmarc was always holding back, but where Diret saw a boy holding back, she saw a boy that was indecisive, hesitant. She’d seen the clip of what the boy had done to Devin during his test, but that was nothing to go by. What a person was capable of doing in anger was not a good standard to judge their ability by. No. True talent existed in what a person could summon by will. Could they produce the same results on a deadline, could they create the same outcome under pressure. Could they do it levelheaded. So far the only times she had seen Melmarc stand out was when he was not level headed, which was interesting because he still looked level headed.
With Devin he had been angry—a vigilante seeking justice for what the boys had done to others. It was a process that had been intentionally scripted to see what heroes existed among the new intakes, to see what desire could bring out of them.
Then he had done it again against Sanders, dispatching of the boy with a cold and calculated demeanor born of some level of anger towards him.
Anyone could get angry and do amazing things. Could he do amazing things against someone that he had nothing against?
That was the question.
It was the question Naomi wasn’t sure he would be able to answer when something changed. Her brows furrowed as she watched Melmarc. He stood a distance away from Diret now, separated from the boy after a few more tussles.
Then she saw the look on Diret’s face, the smile.
Trust the maniac to notice these things first, she sighed mentally.
Melmarc Lockwood was slightly different now. Then again, he had been different ever since his older brother had spoken. There was a bond there that Naomi doubted anybody who’d spent half a second with the brothers could not see.
It was as if Ark had woken Melmarc up from some kind of slumber. Melmarc’s gaze relaxed and he looked at Diret, watched him as if calculating the best way to win. There was something in his eyes that looked familiar, something Diret had to have recognized by now.
One of the things that made Diret stand out from the rest of his teammates was his resolution. He had killed monsters in uncontrolled environments in situations where he did not know if anyone was coming to help him.
There was something that changed a person when they took their first monster life. Then there was something else that changed when they learnt to make the decision. Diret knew the resolution required to choose to take a monster’s life. And while it was not the same as deciding to kill another person, it’s effects were close enough.
“So,” Diret moved slightly, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Care to share what you’ve learnt with the class?”
His question changed something in Melmarc’s eyes, and Melmarc looked at him differently. In this moment, Naomi realized what was familiar about the look in his eyes, why it was similar to Diret’s but not the same.
Melmarc was not calculating how to beat his opponent. He was calculating how to kill the human being in front of him.
It can’t be possible, she thought with a little worry. She’d seen the boy’s file. There was nothing about taking another human being’s life in it. And the look was not the easiest thing to fake, especially around someone as seasoned as she was.
Melmarc bounced on the balls of his feet, and Naomi prepared herself for what would come next. She would be lying if she said that she was not curious about how Melmarc would choose to do it. Over on the other side, she saw Ark preparing himself as well. It was in the look in his eyes, the way he watched, anticipating, calculating. He needed to get to his brother in that final moment between victory and something worse.
Naomi cataloged the information, filed it away as Diret prepared himself for combat.
Then Melmarc disappeared.
Shock registered on her face for the briefest moment. It delayed her movement. Then the sound came. It cracked through the entire space like a whip, holding everybody to silence.
Naomi had seen what had happened, but it still felt like the sound came before the action.
Melmarc had darted forward, and somehow channeled power from the forward dash and into his arms, swinging it upward as if swinging a weapon from an underhand diagonal strike. The momentum had moved almost seamlessly. His arm came up and his fist cracked Diret in the jaw before Diret had even known what was happening. Then Melmarc sidestepped him and watched.
Diret did not go down immediately, though. He staggered first, fighting to stay on his feet. His usual boyish grin was gone now, replaced with a look of shock and awe that slowly morphed into pain. His eyes dimmed in the way a person’s did when they were on the precipice of unconsciousness. Then they sharpened, the boy refusing to go down.
Naomi waited and watched just as everyone in the room waited and watched, including Melmarc.
Diret staggered again, to the left, then to the right. He teetered, knees shaking, threatening to buckle under him. He fought against the blackout.
Then his knees gave out.
He dropped to them, kneeling and sitting, head bowed and hanging. Naomi’s gaze moved over to Melmarc. The boy knew the exact same thing that she knew.
The fight was over.
He had won.
Well, color me surprised, she thought with a smile. Maybe the kid’s really got something to work with.
“Alright,” she announced. “That’s enough.”
Her words seemed to dispel the children from some spell the entire scene had cast upon them, birthing a still silence. They blinked, all of them, then seemed to take in a breath that they had not known they’d been holding. As for Ark, he sighed in relief.
Naomi walked over to Diret and leaned to the side to get a look at his face. “You good, kid?” she asked.
He raised a hand to hold her off, index finger extended. Naomi blinked at that. He had succeeded in fighting off the blackout, but his brain had still registered the knockout somehow.
It almost made her laugh.
“How long do you need, kiddo?” she asked, happy to give him all the time he needed.
His fingers shot up. He held four up, but the four fingers were shaky. He dropped two. They were still shaky. In the end, he held all of them up, settling for five. This time they looked more solid.
Naomi nodded at that. “Five?”
He closed his fist and opened it again. It was confirmation.
“Alright, then. Got it.” She returned her attention to the others. “Alright then. Everybody, strength and stamina training. You all know what I need.” She clapped loudly. “Get to it.”
The children groaned and grumbled under their breaths but same nothing comprehensible. Naomi understood it. Most of them were already sore from sparring with each other and yet they were not being given the time to rest.
“Nope.” Naomi pointed. “Not you two. You two are coming with me.”
Melmarc and Ark paused mid exit.
“Ooh,” Ark teased, looking at his younger brother. “Someone’s in trouble.”
Melmarc sighed. “She called you too.”
“Just to play witness.”
Melmarc opened his mouth to respond as Naomi walked away knowing that they would follow but said nothing.
She took them to the edge of the room, standing separate from the rest of the team. At the center of the room, Diret remained on his knees, head hung low, arms hanging loose by his side.
Alone with both brothers, Naomi spoke. “I want to start by saying that nobody’s in trouble.”
Melmarc shot his brother a triumphant look. “Ha!”
“So childish,” Ark said blandly, rolling his eyes. “When will you grow up?”
Melmarc’s jaw dropped, then he frowned. Then he let the matter die. It was a typical brotherly interaction if Naomi had ever seen one.
“So, why did you call us, teach?” Ark said in a laidback tone. “Diret’s good, isn’t he?”
Naomi nodded. “He just needs five minutes to re-orient, and he’ll be back on his feet.”
“Thank God for that,” Melmarc murmured.
“Uhuh. Thank God for that.” Naomi did her best not to sound unbothered. As a teacher, when you the combat class long enough, you developed a certain level of resistance to watching kids beat each other up. But that was not why she had called them aside. “You.” She looked at Melmarc. “You pulled your punch.”
Melmarc blinked as if she had just said something that he did not know. The greater chance was probably that he was surprised that she’d seen it.
She waited for him to realize that while it had been a statement of fact, there was still a question in there for him to answer.
In the end, he nodded, while his teammates did suicides on the other side of the room under the supervision of the other Instructors.
“I thought there was too much force behind the punch,” Melmarc admitted. “It was a spar. I didn’t want to do too much.”
Naomi guessed that made sense. “But you didn’t plan on pulling your punch in the beginning. What changed?”
Melmarc rubbed the back of his neck nervously. Large as they were, he and his brother towered over her.
Ark sighed and gestured at Melmarc, manage to encompass all of him with the single gesture. “Knock outs are fun, but my brother has a heart of gold. He doesn’t like inflicting pain on others.”
“I see,” she mused. “So, he thought that Diret wouldn’t be able to take it.”
“No, ma’am,” Melmarc responded.
“Mrs. Southfire is fine,” she corrected him.
“Yes, Mrs. Southfire,” he rectified. “I pulled it back because I had made a miscalculation. I actually wanted to stagger him into a take down.”
Naomi folded her arms over her chest, doing the combat math. Considering what she’d seen, it was a possible path to victory, winning through a takedown. “Is it because he escaped your submission the first time?”
“Yes,” Melmarc nodded. “I wanted to see if I could pull it off the second time.”
It wasn’t the best answer, but it was good enough for her.
“Alright.” She unfolded her arms and placed her hands on her waist. “What do you know about this Promise program we’ve started?”
“That it’s a first,” Melmarc answered.
“That it takes specific qualifications to be a part of it,” Ark added.
“Those are true.” It seemed they were attentive, regardless of all of Ark’s shenanigans. “Another thing is that it is a program created with the sole purpose of the team working under the command of a single student. This program is designed to teach people of specific abilities how to obey as well as anticipate a single leader. They need to be able to know what the leader needs, not wants, and make it happen before it’s too late for it to happen.”
Melmarc and his brother exchanged a look.
“Sounds like a tall order for kids our age,” Ark said.
Naomi was already shaking her head. “We don’t expect all of you to be perfect. Just good enough. Also,” she looked at them pointedly. “You two already do that well enough with each other.”
Ark held Melmarc’s hand, intertwining their fingers. “That’s because we’re in love,” he said, puppy-eyed. “I don’t know what I’ll do without him.”
Melmarc sighed and tried to unlace their fingers. Ark fought him on every attempt. In the end, he gave up and hung his head.
“This is why we’re in couple’s counseling,” Ark admonished him. “You shouldn’t be ashamed of our love.”
Melmarc nodded, not because he agreed but because he was tired of trying to fight back.
Normally, Naomi would be annoyed by the lack of seriousness, but she could not help but smile on this one. This was exactly what they were trying to get out of the children in the Promise program. Not the amount of unseriousness, but the level of understanding. They were trying to take this level of sibling connection and recreate it among a group of students who were powerful and believed that they were supposed to be standing at the top in their own right.
She was beginning to understand why Diret had chosen Ark for it. He was, in a way, powerful, deserving of a chance at the top, but he was alright where he was. Ark on the other hand was happy to be anywhere as long as he was supporting Melmarc. It was interesting since he was the older of the brothers. As for Diret, he had concluded that Melmarc was a fun obsession so he would clearly act accordingly, supporting Melmarc instead of taking the lead.
It made sense. The Promise program was not necessarily about finding a leader. It was about designing a team that could anticipate a single individual and provide what they needed before they even realized that they needed it.
They have to know his abilities, and he has to trust that they will only do what is right for him to achieve the goal of the team.
It was an interesting concept. The question was why the schools were doing it. They had to know that the chances of success were very slim. Trust and knowledge like that existed between siblings who genuinely cared about each other. She looked at Ark’s smug smile and Melmarc’s exasperated expression. She almost shook her head. Fallen High would not be able to recreate this, and the people who had brought it up had to know that. And if Fallen High could not recreate it, she doubted there was any other school that could.
Unless…
Her brain worked through the thoughts.
Unless they aren’t really trying to achieve it.
What if trying to recreate it was actually what they wanted to confirm and not actually recreating it? What if they simply wanted to see if it was something that could be done?
“So what do you say?” she asked, sure of it now.
Melmarc and Ark blinked. “To what?” they asked in unison.
“To being the student that all the students are going to have to anticipate.”
“Are you sure I’m the right fit?” Melmarc asked.
Naomi shrugged. “You don’t fight like a [Faker], so that might be a hurdle for the team to climb, because they’ll have to figure out what a [Faker] needs while anticipating a [Faker] that fights more like a [Basher].” She gestured at him. “I’m guessing you fight like that because of your size and how you were trained.”
“There’s me, too.” Ark pointed at himself. “Surviving me means he has to be strong.”
He looked proud of himself for an older brother boasting about bullying his younger brother. Then again, it was a thing with male siblings. She, too, had had to survive her male cousins growing up.
“I’m not saying it’s a bad thing,” she added so that there would be no misunderstanding. “If anything, it gives diversity. I just need to be sure you can also fight like a [Faker] when you have to. So, what do you say?”
Diret popped up between them suddenly. “Of course he’ll take it.”
The boy was spotting a very shiny bruise on his jaw.
“You sure you don’t need to check that out?” she asked him, nodding at the bruise.
Both brothers looked at it, and while Ark grinned like a proud teacher, Melmarc winced as if it was worse than it looked.
“It hurts worse than it looks,” Diret told Melmarc. “But I’m fine. You pack a mean punch. I can only imagine what would’ve happened if you hadn’t pulled your punch. Felt like you were trying to kill me there for a second.”
Ark chuckled in good fun, but Melmarc looked a little worried at that.
“Anyway,” Diret looked at her. “I was right. You can say it. He’ll take the job.”
Naomi rolled her eyes, then pointedly ignored him. “So, what do you say, Melmarc?”
“Doesn’t sound bad,” he said, sounding a little reluctant.
Naomi sighed. “You don’t have to do it, if you don’t want to. You can take some time to think about it.”
“No.” Melmarc shook his head, resolute. “I’ll do it.”
Diret clapped. “Great.” He looked excited, grinning from ear to ear. “This is going to be so much fun.”
Naomi opened her mouth to talk when a phone started ringing. Every eye turned in the direction of the lockers where everyone kept their phones. The ringing was coming from there, obviously.
Eyes moved around, wondering who owned the specific ringtone.
Melmarc was looking at Ark, instead of around, like everyone else.
“Sorry about that,” Ark apologized. Then he reached into his pocket and brought out his phone.
What the hell?
He picked up the call and put it to his ear. “Hi, mom.”
Did he just teleport his phone? What skill is that?
Naomi was left baffled and intrigued.
Just how much were the Lockwood brothers capable of?