“Miyu! Now! Just like we practiced!”

She dashed across the training arena as she shouted her orders, kicking up a dust cloud behind her for every quickened step she took. Her gaze never left the imposing eagle that soared above them, its larger than usual wings flapping every now and then as it prepared to dive down to strike.

Finally reaching the position she was aiming for, she slid through the ground, using her left hand to quickly deaccelerate by clawing at the ground. She felt the dust and occasional small stone peeling off the skin of her fingers, however, whatever feeling of pain that may have caused was tossed aside as she watched the eagle take a dive, its sharp talons ready to tear them apart. She could already feel how painful it'd be to get pierced by those.

Her sliding quickly came to a stop. She brought her right hand up with haste, opening it wide and aiming at the sky. From her palm erupted a jet of fire of considerable size and width, a whirlwind of flames that shot upwards. Still, the pillar of fire didn’t even come close to grazing the winged animal.

But that was all part of her plan.

The eagle shrieked, a shriek that sounded almost mocking, as it adjusted its route to avoid the flames, yet it kept charging nonetheless. That’s when she smirked, knowing full well the animal – Or rather, her classmate – had fallen in their trap.

There was a scream, one that could easily obliterate her eardrums if she were to stand near the source of it, and she looked behind her, watching Takeuchi Miyu – her companion for the duel and one of the Japanese students enrolled at the academy – who, with her eyes closed and agape, was letting out extremely powerful, visible sound waves that kept ripping the air itself apart. The longer she kept screaming the more waves were generated.

Her smirk only grew as she watched the power of the sonic scream collide with her still ongoing jet of fire. There was a brief moment of confusion as they clashed, only for the sonic waves to redirect the fire, molding it into a giant cone that was aimed straight for the eagle.

Having recently veered, the oversized eagle found itself unable to dodge in time. It flapped its wings once, releasing a burst of razor sharp wind to try and divert the incoming fire, but it was nothing but a pitiable attempt to escape defeat. The vortex of fire kept going strong, the air blast managing to do nothing but be consumed by it.

The cone of flames enveloped the eagle, its wings catching on fire as if they were made of paper, seconds before the sonic scream hit it. Despite being weakened by distance, the scream was enough to disorientate the eagle midair and, coupled with the fire that scorched its feathers, it soon became unable to hold itself up in the sky, plunging down towards the ground.

A warm white light enveloped it as it descended and vanished as soon as it came, leaving behind the body of a school girl dressed in a white and blue uniform. She grimaced as she watched the girl, her classmate, about to reach the floor. A fall like that would break every single bone of her body for sure.

But it didn’t, just when the eagle girl was about to touch the ground she stopped, hanging loosely only a meter above the dirty field before it slowly descended. Now resting on the floor, it was clear the girl was unconscious.

“Be careful when you decide to use a trick like that next time!”- Came the admonishing voice of one of her professors, who was sitting in the steps that surrounded the arena, and the reason the girl in front of her didn’t have every bone pulverized. Bae Yoonjung was there along with a few more classmates that were witnessing the training fight.

With the end of semester tournament approaching, this kind of practices were not uncommon. Usually students would practice one on one, without the use of their powers - or at least, controlling the use of their powers - but right now, as the end of classes approached, the students were allowed to go all out in a few friendly sparring matches.

Most students would usually stop by to look at those sorts of fights, some of them just looking for fun, others with more "hidden" intentions, mostly formulating a strategy against a particular teammate either because they had been showing way too much progress during the semester or because their power held an advantage over their own.

Either way, the last weeks before the tournament turned the usually friendly environment into a competitive warzone, people became snappy and easily angered, choleric one could say.

But not her, she wasn’t really the type to get bothered by all the competition. Yeah, she wanted to win the tournament just as much as anyone else given its more than desirable prize, but it wasn’t worth being a prick to other people.

“We really pulled that one neatly, didn’t we?”- Miyu said between giggles as she jogged to her side before looking down at the unconscious girl. - “Too bad Hyewon will probably want our heads on a platter when she wakes up...”

She chuckled. Hyewon, a curious individual as she was, would probably be mad they didn’t tell her about their plan to combine techniques. The small girl wasn’t one to get angry often, but she certainly gets upset whenever someone hides or omits telling her stuff such as this. She just hates surprises, and it’s not like they were obligated to confide their battle plans with her anyways. 

She was about to answer with some silly joke when she noticed something. They had let their guard down after the success.

This was a two on two battle, obviously.

She readied a fireball on her left hand, scanning the training battlefield as Miyu gave her back to her, realizing the same thing and focusing on the side she couldn’t see. The training ground itself was big, but barren this time, only a few rocks served as possible protection so being sneaky was an impossibility.

That still didn’t explain where their other opponent was nonetheless.

“Last time I checked the other Chaeyeon didn’t have the ability to turn invisible, did she?”- She asked, though Miyu didn’t answer.

She could feel the blood flowing through her body, the anticipation shaking her entire being. She looked at her hand, it was pulsing, trembling slightly, and so was the fireball she had casted with it.

No, wait, that was wrong…

She wasn’t shaking at all.

But the ground was faintly rumbling below her.

“Kaeun!”- She heard Miyu shout, this time without the use of her powers – “Below us…! She is…!”

Her partner couldn’t finish the sentence before a hand the size of Kaeun herself burst through the floor, swatting her away with enough force to send her rolling away a few meters. A humongous body, of about seven meters’ length, soon followed the hand, leaving a gaping hole in the field as it emerged from the cavity completely.

“How the hell did we miss this thing?!”- Kaeun heard Miyu protesting from behind the giant earth golem and, to be honest, she had no satisfactory answer to that question.

Still on the ground, Kaeun watched the golem turn around to face Miyu as it slothfully lifted its right arm. A moment later, it swung down full force, forcing Miyu to roll away and shattering the ground with ease.

Miyu didn’t wait for it to recover, screaming again, this time with a higher amplitude that the one she used to knock down Hyewon from the air, though it did little to nothing to the golem in front of her, except probably annoying it.

“Um! Kaeun?! A little help would be nice!”- Shocked at her lack of success, Miyu turned to Kaeun – who still hadn’t gotten up – as she signaled towards the earth golem. – “How in the hell are we supposed to take this thing out?!”

The golem, who until now had been slowly walking up to Miyu, swung again, this time almost managing to crush the brown haired sonokinetic before she jumped away.

“Jesus Christ, Kaeun, do something!”

She quickly racked her brains for a solution. She knew that golems were almost impervious to sound damage, so that left Miyu out of the picture – Unless she wanted to punch that thing, something highly discouraged – but earth golems in particular were almost equally resistant to fire damage so her powers were borderline useless too. Their joints would probably be the weakest point, so maybe if she could land a strong enough hit to one of them they could get an advantage?

She had to try.

“I’ve got an idea!”- Kaeun finally got up, shouting at the Japanese girl - “Keep it still for me!”

“You better do something great!”- Miyu nodded, directing her attention to the golem once more - “My throat is going to be so sore tomorrow…”

She screamed, attaining the same amplitude as before as the sound waves rippled through the air. Again, they did no visible damage to the golem, yet they were enough to hold it back. The creature struggled to take steps against the constant sonic pressure.

All while Kaeun conjured another flame ball, making it bigger and bigger as she contoured the flames with her hands. Soon enough, a ball the size of a wrecking ball formed in Kaeun’s hands as she struggled to contain it. It kept growing and growing until Kaeun’s arms felt like they were about to detach from her body, she couldn’t contain the fire anymore and the amount of energy the fireball was consuming to be kept still was exerting more than optimal pressure on her body.

“Let’s get cooking!”

Locking on the golem, who was gaining ground on Miyu as the woman tired of shouting, Kaeun released the flaming ball, launching it directly at the living construct. The fireball left a scorching trail of fire through the training ground as it neared the mythological creature, which was too slow to move aside even if it had noticed it coming in the first place.

It collided with tremendous force, knocking the golem out of balance and creating a huge barrier of smoke. The floor under her feet quaked as the golem collapsed, though she couldn’t see it given the smoke.

“Yes! Good job girl!”- Kaeun heard Miyu celebrating and for a moment she was tempted to join in, until the hairs at the back of her neck bristled.

As the smoke settled, the figure of the golem appeared again, kneeled on the ground with its left hand resting on its right knee, both the girls and the golem had their eyes fixated in the severed arm made out of rocks, dirt and vines that laid on the ground.

And Kaeun allowed herself to smirk at last, her plan had worked.

Though the victory was short-lived.

The golem lifted its remaining hand, removing it from its knee and placing it on the ground.

“What is she…?”-  Miyu astonished comment reached Kaeun’s ears, she couldn’t believe her eyes either.

A few seconds later, stone, dust and mud that belonged to the arena began crawling their way up the golem’s arm, solidifying as they started reaching the place where the missing arm used to be. After a brief moment, an exact replica of that arm formed. The golem moved it, getting accustomed to the new feeling, before its rough, factionless face turned back to its two adversaries.

“That… hurt…”- The creature spoke with a low, guttural voice that came out of the oval hole that was where the mouth should have been.

“I didn’t know she could do that…”- Kaeun, defeated, muttered as she watched the golem getting closer.

She couldn’t move, baffled, as she saw the golem rise its hand…

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

“And BAM!”- Wonyoung clapped her hands together, releasing a sonorous clap that attracted the attention of the nearby tables, but the girl didn’t mind at all – “It crushed you under its newly formed hand.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it…”- Kaeun’s memory was a bit foggy after being knocked out so easily the past Friday, so she had requested a summary of the battle from one of her friends after coming back to class on Monday - “What about Miyu?”

“She surrendered, reckon she didn’t want Chaeyeon to manhandle her too”- Yoonjin, who up until that moment had been gossiping with a half-asleep Minjoo, joined the conversation by moving closer to Wonyoung’s side - “That matchup for both of you”

“You don’t have to tell me about it…”- Kaeun grumbled, whose idea was it to pair a sonokinetic and a pyrokinetic against a someone that had the ability to resist both? No particular answer came to mind, since her main training professors all had those sadistic outbursts from time to time in which they paired completely uneven matches, probably for s and giggles.

Right now, she was at the cafeteria, conversing with three of her friends until the bell rang, indicating their return to class. One would think that, after being utterly destroyed by a giant earth golem, one would have to spend an eternity in the infirmary.

But they didn’t have one to begin with, perks of living with people that had the ability to heal any and all sorts of injury, or at least most of them.

“Look at the bright side, at least you know Chaeyeon can frigging regenerate her limbs while in golem form”- Wonyoung commented, seemingly starstruck by their classmate’s new power - “I tell you, the entire benches were shocked when that happened, even the teachers, no one knew she could do that.”

Kaeun grumbled, Lee Chaeyeon just had to wait for their match to reveal such a feat.

“Does that girl have any weakness at all…?”

“I mean; since the type of golem she becomes is based on her surroundings I’d say Hitomi could take her out only by spurting a little bit of water at her…”- Wonyoung, without ever shutting up, tried to correct her.

“What does water…?”

“Pokemon”

“Ah” - Kaeun buried her head in her arms, sighing - “Still, it was a rhetorical question, dolt…”-

“Yeah sure.”- Her classmate tried her best at consoling her - “Come on, cheer up, you still have a good chance of cutting top three in the end of semester tournament.”

The end of semester tournament, the name was enough to leave a bitter taste in .

It was a maintained tradition for the school, every semester the students would compete with each other in an elimination format. Professors often said it was a way to measure how they had developed their skills along the entire study semester.

Kaeun, in the three years she had been attending that particular hero school – ever since she discovered she could control fire – had never been able to get first place. At most she had ended up being top 8; though her friends think it’s remarkable that she had been getting better as time went on.

Seoul super hero academy… such a grandiose name for what it seemed to be an average school, minus the constant practice and giant training grounds of course. Born out of a concord between South Korea and Japan when the international schooling rules for super heroes were stablished by the UN many years ago, the academy looked imposing and all but everything still felt so… normal to Kaeun.

She had expected other things to be honest, more fighting the bad guys and less sitting down to learn laws and politics.

“I don’t know… I don’t feel prepared enough.”- She was usually optimistic when it came to battling, yet she could not say the same for this particular tournament. She had been feeling down as of late although she couldn’t exactly pinpoint why.

“Here comes Debbie downer again…”- Minjoo, whose head was pressed against the cafeteria table, sat upright with a yawn. - “Let’s just change the topic… did you three know there is a new student coming today?”

“Oh really?”- Kaeun was the first one to answer Minjoo’s news, suddenly perking up.

“I knew you’d be interested, you flirt!”- Yoonjin exclaimed, hitting Kaeun’s shoulder as she did.

“I prefer the term, social butterfly”- Kaeun replied, giving her classmate a huge smile and prompting Wonyoung and Yoonjin to exchange doubtful glances with each other - “Come on, I’m serious, I’m all about making new friends.”

“Bigger lies were never told”- Yoonjin pointed out, holding back a giggle.

“Shut up you little giraffe!”- Kaeun removed her head from her arms, protesting - “It only happened once!”

“Shut it guys!”- Wonyoung, who had gone quiet all of a sudden – something that seldom happened – quickly silenced both of them, adding with a whisper - “Look behind you”

The director of the whole institution, a grizzly old man with greyish hair, was walking towards their table at an unusually rapid pace. He wasn’t seen much around and when he was that meant something big had happened.

He was a clairvoyant, regarded as one of the best in the last hundred years of history, and a man of few words, which added to the mysterious aura.

“Misses, it is nice seeing you”- He made an effort to conceal his frail voice by keeping it low - “I’m in need of Kaeun’s assistance, so if you could, please follow me…”

“Sure sir…”- Kaeun did not ask for reasons, she knew the old man was known for doing totally random things that would probably make sense in a near future… or maybe not.

He didn’t really wait for her approval as he turned around, heading for the exit. Kaeun looked at her friends, confused, but they offered nothing but a shrug. She then quickly followed the director out of the room. For an old man he sure walked fast.

They walked in silence for a while, heading to his office as far as Kaeun knew, before the director finally spoke up.

“A new student will be attending classes from today onwards”- He explained without stopping his walk as Kaeun caught up to his side - “She comes from Japan, I would have asked a professor to introduce them to the building, but I figured a younger, more sympathetic classmate would be preferable”

“Why not get another Japanese student, sir?”

“Ah… that’d have been the simplest solution...” - Kaeun waited for him to continue, but the old man didn’t speak any further, so either he chose to kept the information to himself or he had deemed it unimportant.

“I understand, sir.”- Her reply was short but respectful, which earned her a nod of approval in return.

Kaeun, despite never traveling out of Seoul, knew that this wasn’t the only establishment for powered people in both South Korea and Japan.

Heroes, powered people, supers, whatever you want to call them, weren’t exactly a new thing. In fact, the oldest known hero was dated to be as far behind as the roman ages. However, it wasn’t until recently – at least fifty years ago – that there was a boom to the rate of powered people appearances.

There still weren’t many, but they weren’t as uncommon as before either.

The united nations, by unanimous vote between the security council parties, ruled that every country had to have at least a school to contain and train people for the responsible use of their powers, acting before the situation got out of control.

And who would blame them? With the rising tide of new heroes, there was bound to be a few villains as well, hence why the world saw them as an immediate threat.

They were educated and trained in those institutions, forbidden to exit their city and state until their studies finished, only then were they able to move freely on their own.

Nothing was said after that until the moment they reached the director’s office. He opened the door and allowed Kaeun to go in first, who marveled at the amount of detail the room possessed. No matter how many times she visited – which weren’t exactly many to begin with – she’d always be amazed by the entire room design. Boasting polished oak flooring that matched the walls beige color, the room was nothing short of inviting. A black couch was directly below a library filled with all sorts of books, with topics that ranged from the history of the hero school itself to multiple tomes that were about understanding the nature of the power gain teenagers went through.

It was interesting to note, most super heroes’ powers started showing before they turned 25, there were some instances of them manifesting later in their life however rare they could be.

“Lee Kaeun, meet Miyawaki Sakura. Our new student”- Kaeun was brought back to earth when the director talked again, this time standing right next to a girl, quite obviously the new student, who looked to be around, if not a little younger than Kaeun’s age - “Miss Lee Kaeun will help you get acquainted with the facilities”

Kaeun froze for a second, wondering if she should extend her hand for a handshake as a gesture of friendliness, but settled for a respectful nod instead. The new girl, who h