1… 2… 3…

Her arm shot forward as she closed her eyes, allowing the power to flow through her.

1… 2… 3…

She felt the cold mist caressing her body, slithering in waves along her torso and towards her right arm, after briefs moments she began to feel it hardening at the tip of her fingers, bringing the characteristic green glow along with it.

She opened her eyes, one of her trademark spears floating right in front of her. She reached for it, gripping the spear’s hilt with contained strength. It felt like rubber to the touch, yet it could cut through most materials with ease.

The rubber-like handle brought her some inner peace, the familiar sensation calming down her nerves.

She began to manifest even more spears.

Three more appeared, floating right above her head, then another three.

Yes! Yes! She was regaining control!

It had been a hard thing to do lately… especially after such a disgraceful defeat…

“…!”- As soon as that thought crossed her mind a few spears began to falter, shifting in and out of the material plane. She gritted her teeth, growing more and more frustrated.

“Ah! God damn it!”- All the remaining spears exploded into a burst of energy as soon as she lost her cool. Now she’d have to try again.

The walls of the training chamber sizzled as they absorbed the surplus energy, powered by anti-power technology, which made it a considerably safer environment for students.

She had been struggling with her powers lately, unable to take them to her full potential again.

And it had all started the moment she lost her match against Lee Kaeun.

Juri sighs, controlling (more like, trying to control) her breath as best as she could. She found the idea of a little break quite desirable.

The psychic glanced at the clock, it was currently really late at night, so she must’ve been training for around eight hours so far, which wasn’t unusual at all for her. The training room was like a second home.

Time spent elsewhere was time wasted, her powers wouldn’t strengthen on their own.

She reclined against one of the walls, looking for her bag and finding it neatly stashed in the opposite part of the room, surrounded by lots of consumed energy bars envelopes and a few bottles of water.

No wonder she was so thin.

She concentrated on one of the half-empty bottles for a few seconds, trying to manifest her abilities again to no use. For a person with psychic powers she sure had no talent for telekinesis whatsoever.

Succumbing to her own thirst, Juri got up once more, walking all the way to the bottle, taking it and promptly sitting down once more. Her muscles were starting to ache, a clear testament to her many training hours without rest.

The memories began flooding back the moment she found herself idle. How she had given into exhaustion after the fight with Kaeun, how she had been taken away from the arena and how she witnessed Kaeun’s short-lived ascension into something mightier from the benches after they were done patching her up.

It was a whirlwind of raw power; she remembers feeling the heat of the fire warming up her cheeks even whilst being almost a hundred meters away. She couldn’t make sense of it at all, at least not at first.

Kaeun’s new power was impressive, worthy of Juri’s envy, even if it was obvious a girl like Kaeun didn’t deserve something like that at all.

But that wasn’t what caught her attention the most, not at all.

Miyawaki Sakura.

She had heard everything about her from the students hushed whispers the days following the tournament. They claimed the girl had the power to neutralize other people’s powers, absorb them and then boost them as she made them her own.

Those “barriers” she imposed on Kaeun, those were the key. They were straining enough to get Kaeun to surpass her own abilities, breaking the seal and tapping into something far more powerful.

She needed that.  She was a master of the psychic arts but she wanted to go past that, above it, and turn into one of the greatest heroes Asia had ever seen.

A few mental barriers were nothing she couldn’t deal with.

She was Takahashi Juri, A class best student and the most prominent figure in the whole Seoul Hero Academy. Everyone knew her, everyone respected her and nobody would even dare to cross her.

She wasn’t a super hero yet, but she was treated as such, and her skills warranted it.

She had been the winner, up until now, of the last three tournaments held by the school. She had even attended international events, always taking home a trophy. She was destined for greatness from the get-go.

Yet she feared that, if something as petty as losing a minor tournament could trouble her enough to make her powers falter, then her future reign would soon be over before it even began. As the user of mental powers, her emotions had to be controlled at all times, that’s what she was taught and those are the teachings to which she abided all those years.

But that loss had decimated her spirit, and she could very well feel it. It had instilled doubt in her heart, something she hadn’t felt in a very long time.

Lee Kaeun… Even saying her name left a clear distaste in Juri’s mouth.

How could somebody like her outdo Juri? Even if was nothing more than luck, even if she was seconds away from defeating her before her body gave in to her own exhaustion… it was preposterous.

Was this some sort of nightmare? – she had been asking herself that question a lot lately.

“Crap…!”- Juri yapped as she felt her hand skin being pierced by her own nails. She had been unconsciously applying too much force, she had to calm down.

She erased Kaeun’s giggling image from her head, pushing it to the depths of her mind as she recited a few mantras to remain serene. Once her focus returned, she went back to her original thought.

Sakura… She had to find her…

********************************************

The girl was accompanied by a couple of students, people Juri didn’t recognize very well. They were probably from the lower classes, as Juri would have identified most students from A or B class.

It wasn’t elitism, or so she claimed, she just didn’t have the time to make friends (nor did she want to) and people from the lower classes were often too scared to approach her (not that she’d talk to them either).

She began her approach, swiftly crossing over the academy’s grounds to reach Sakura before she could begin making her way to the dorms, or else she would probably lose her chance at a conversation.

“Hello.”- She mustered up a greeting as she reached the girl’s side, surprising both Sakura and her two companions. – “We need to talk.”

Sakura looked even more taken aback and Juri cursed her lackluster socializing abilities, as they were palpably detrimental to her “cause”.

“Ah… yes, sure… Juri, is it?”- It took Sakura a few seconds to come back from her stupor and answer – “You guys go ahead without me!”

Sakura’s friends muttered in agreement before they gave Juri a respectful bow that masked their underlying surprise, of course they knew who she was. A few seconds afterwards they were skipping away from the duo with peculiar urgency.

“So…”- Sakura then spoke, making Juri tear her eyes away from the fleeing students to focus back on her – “Care for a walk?”

Juri nodded solemnly, both of them beginning to make their way towards the dorms.

“I need your help”- The cold-looking beauty deadpanned.

 The woman, who had learned the nickname of “Cherry blossom” around the campus given her name, didn’t appear surprised at all by Juri’s unusual request.

“I figured, you are not the first to come to me, you know?”- Sakura gave her a knowing smile, perhaps thinking she had her fellow Japanese figured out already. - “I’ve heard about you Juri, in fact, I thought you’d have come to me sooner.”

“You helped Lee Kaeun unlock something powerful”- Juri got to the point, seeing how Sakura was quick to do so herself - “I strive to do the same, so you need to help me.”

“Uhm, sorry to disappoint, I can’t do anything for you”- Sakura let out a short giggle as she walked, eyes forward. - “Kaeun got that on her own, I didn’t help at all”

Bah, as if somebody like Lee Kaeun was capable of such a feat by herself. Juri didn’t buy that for a second.

“Then I need you to place the power barriers on me”- Juri didn’t relent. Whether they were her own merits or Sakura’s, it was undeniable that the girl played a vital part.

However, Sakura didn’t answer, she instead stopped her walk abruptly, turning to focus on Juri with an inquisitive look on her face.

“Tell me, what do you think you’ll achieve with this?”- She questioned, taking a good look at Juri as she did, scanning her from head to toe.

“Power.”- Juri answered matter-of-factly, wasn’t that what everyone was looking for? To get stronger?

There was no other real answer to that question, she’d have laughed out loud at the girl’s foolish question yet she couldn’t risk angering Sakura.

“Is that so… and what if you can’t overcome it?”- Sakura seemed unimpressed.

“I will.”- Juri’s answer was delivered within the second, her voice lacking doubt or hesitation.

“But if you can’t?” - Sakura asked once more, hoping for a real answer this time. Something in her tone of voice had changed, which raised a few alarms in Juri’s head.

She felt like she was being analyzed.

The atmosphere surrounding them turned foul, Sakura’s face was now unreadable which was quite the contrast with her previous easy-going self, yet Juri wasn’t intimidated nonetheless.

“I’ll break through them.”- That final comment earned a giggle from Sakura in return to Juri’s icy stare, something that managed to somewhat defuse the previous unexpected tension.

“You sound an awful lot like Kaeun, you know that, right?”- Juri’s nose scrunched in distaste at the comparison, but she said nothing, not wanting to test Sakura’s patience any longer. – “But I feel like your goals are different from hers, even if hers was only mere obstinacy, so it led her to push harder… I don’t know myself.”

Sakura spoke of Kaeun with fondness… Maybe the rumors Juri had heard about the two of them becoming a couple weren’t as farfetched as she thought them to be.

Mediocrity apparently loved company.

“My goal is far greater than whatever Lee’s simpleminded objectives in life are”- Sakura raised one of her eyebrows as Juri answered. Maybe she was making it too apparent that she didn’t think well of her peer – “I’ve trained all my life for my own betterment and this is an incredible opportunity, you have to help me.”

“I told you, I can’t help you and, even if I could, I don’t have the time”- Sakura shrugged. - “Exams and all, you know? So, if you don’t mind…”

The girl turned around, probably thinking the conversation over already, as she began sauntering her way towards the dormitories once more, leaving Juri behind.

How dare she?!

Of course she wouldn’t understand what Juri wanted, she was just as much of a naïve fool as Kaeun! She couldn’t let Sakura get away now. There had to be another way to get her powers to help.

Juri stood there for what seemed like a millennium, trying to come up with something. How was it exactly that Sakura used her power on Kaeun?

“Wait a second!”- It was now or never.

She rushed towards Sakura, arriving at her side in a flash as her hand tightly gripped the girl’s. Sakura turned around, her eyebrows furrowed as she grew annoyed.

“I told you… MMMMH!”-Before she could react, however, Juri had already slid one of her hands behind the girl’s neck, pushing Sakura in her direction and eliciting a yelp out of her as both their lips crashed in chaotic fashion.

It wasn’t something she hadn’t done before, in fact, Juri fancied herself a good kisser, so Sakura’s frantic squirming came as a surprise. Yet this was nothing more than a small peck, as Sakura refused to give Juri access to even when the icy beauty bit her lower lip, asking for permission. Juri held her ground nonetheless, struggling to keep the wriggling Sakura still as the kiss came to an end almost as fast as it had begun.

She pulled back, trying to attune her senses to the possibility of her powers being disrupted.

She felt nothing at all.

Juri locked eyes with a furious Sakura again, her face painted with a frown, silently demanding answers. However, she was met with nothing more than the rebuking cries of a rabid woman and an incoming slap she barely managed to dodge as she took a step backwards.

 “What the hell…?! This is assault! Who the do you think you are…!?”- Sakura’s voice melted into the background as Juri finally felt her mind being wrapped by the allegorical chains.

She was assaulted by a debilitating headache the moment she tried to tap into her psychic powers. She keeled over in pain, grabbing her head, something that was enough to get the raging Sakura to calm down as she looked at Juri with mild concern.

“I can’t control those barriers, I told you it would be a bad idea”- The cherry blossom muttered sternly as Juri struggled to lift herself up from the ground. The headache began easing up, and Juri wasted no opportunity to try again only to be rewarded with another excruciating pang of pain in her temples. She grunted out loud, her nature as a mental user was undoubtedly making this harder for herself, as she could feel her own energy being restrained, something that Kaeun probably hadn’t felt.

She tried to force a few conjurations but failed strepitously, her hands unable to produce even the most basic forms of psychic energy. She was growing a little bit irritated at her lack of success when Sakura spoke again.

“Not so easy as it seemed, is it?”- The girl taunted her with a smug look on her face, possibly thinking of this as a revenge from the unwanted kiss. How exactly had Kaeun m