Ares and Nile didn't seem to care that they were mildly gathering attention from students in the library halls.
Two Spectra level users, taking a certain stance in the middle of the hallway was enough to grab the attention of the students.
"Are they going to fight?" Someone asked.
"I doubt it. This is the library, not a war zone. They'll get in trouble for sure."
"Even if they fight, he'll rub her face on the dirt. He's a 3 and she's just a two." Another scoffed loud enough to earn a glare from Nile. Her dark eyes almost pierced into his soul, making him tremble where he stood.
"Leave the poor kid alone. He's spitting facts," Ares grinned. "I seem to remember a while ago when we fought."
"I can't remember who won that fight. " He placed a finger on his chin. "Oh wait... I won it. And you were crying about it, hahaha."
Nile's fists clenched at her sides but she didn't strike.
"You really think you're so strong you just get to pick on anyone you like?" she asked while glaring at him Ares.
Ares didn't even blink. He just stood there with his arms crossed, looking smug like always.
"I don't pick on little girls," he said. "Only mean girls like you. And I wasn't picking on her. I was... interrogating her."
Kinsey's eye twitched again and Nile shifted her gaze to Rick and Axel. Rick flinched the second her eyes landed on him, like his body remembered the moment she kneed him out of the ring yesterday. He tried to stand still, but his shoulders were stiff and his hands were already curling into fists.
Axel stayed quiet, but he didn't look scared. His eyes were distant and unfocused, like he wasn't even standing there.
He was running numbers inside his head. Angles. Distances. Speed. Timing. All the sorts
If I had Infernal Slash yesterday before the testing… she wouldn't have lasted three seconds.
He replayed it in his mind, her lightning stance, her movement pattern, her habit of overcharging her first strike. If he had even one of his current skills during the test, the fight would have ended before she even touched him. Right?
"You," Nile said, frowning. "Why are you just standing there? Why are you entertaining this jerk?"
Axel blinked, snapping out of his head, but he still didn't answer right away.
Before he could speak, Ares stepped in again.
He turned toward Nile with a grin that was almost challenging.
"Actually," he said, pointing lightly at her. "Why are you here? You don't look like the reading type."
Then, he leaned in a little closer, and asked.
"Or…" he dragged out the word, "…were you following me?"
***
Things were tense for a certain silver-haired girl after she took her test earlier that day. Later that day, she found herself slamming her fist into a punching bag, again and again.
If anyone had walked into the training room at that moment, they wouldn't have gotten a greeting. They would have gotten a punch to the face. That was the kind of mood Nile was in.
Her foot snapped forward, hitting the bag with a loud thud. She imagined it wasn't a bag at all, but the face of a certain blonde haired, blue eyed asshole who had ruined her entire day.
Ares.
Just thinking about him made her muscles tighten.
He cheated. Or at least she believed he did. No one used her lightning against her like that unless they cheated, and Nile refused to believe he had actually outranked her. He was a Spectra 3 while she was a 2.
She had also demanded a redo after the test, but the examiner shut her down. They had the nerve to say the fight was "final" and "according to rules."
She hated losing. She hated it even more when she came out as the top scorer but still felt like the loser.
The bag rattled on its chain as she smashed another punch into it. Her breathing grew heavy, but she didn't stop. She wasn't trying to train skill, she was just burning pure anger.
After the combat trial ended earlier, she had gone for her clearance. While standing with the rest of the students, waiting for her name to be called, she already felt her temper snapping. Some people were whispering about her loss, and how she lost. Even how they knew was a mystery. They thought she didn't hear it but she did.
To make everything worse, a group of boys thought the best time to hit on her was right when she was seconds away from electrocuting the whole hallway.
One idiot walked up to her with a smile that made her fingers twitch.
"Hey, you were amazing out there," he said. "You wanna—"
"Walk away," she warned, "or I'll smash your head against concrete."
One tried complimenting her hair.
Another tried talking about how he "almost" made it to the top five.
Another told her he "liked strong girls."
By the fifth attempt, Nile's patience was almost completely gone.
They picked the wrong girl at the worst possible time.
The only thing she cared about was Ares and defeating him.
Burying him so deep that even the academy drones wouldn't be able to take a picture of the fight.
So the moment the clearance was over, she marched straight to the training room.
Now she stood in front of the reinforced punching bag, one of the heavy grade ones that were built because students with abilities kept breaking the old models.
She had already hit it enough times that the metal hooks squeaked.
Sweat slid down her face, but she didn't wipe it off.
Her knuckles were red. Her shoulders ached. And her breath came fast and wild.
Still, she kept going at it.
She needed this, she needed every hit because if she didn't vent now, she might just blast someone with 200 volts the second she stepped outside.
Finally, after one last powerful kick that made the bag swing violently, Nile stumbled back a little and put her hands on her knees.
She didn't stop because she was calm.
She stopped because she needed to recharge. Every mutant had a limit to how much force they can exert.
Deep inside her mind, she hated this feeling of being outplayed.
Ares wasn't better than her, she believed that he couldn't be. Just because he caught her off guard with his cheating ability didn't make him stronger. If anything it made him weak because leeched off other people's power.
No matter what she told herself, she still felt angry about the whole thing. The only closure she could get was knowing that she could and will defeat him soon.
****
The next morning, Nile woke up with one thing on her mind. Training. She didn't even bother to fully shake off her sleep. She got dressed, tied her hair up, and headed straight out.
But halfway toward the training grounds, she spots someone in the crowd... It was him.
Ares. Walking casually with his hands in his pockets like he couldn't be bothered by anything in the world. She on the other hand was bothered by almost everything and seeing him carefree only pissed her off even more.
"Cheater..." She growled with a low voice.
Her mood went from normal to rotten in one second. She glared at him as he approached her and electricity was practically buzzing under her skin. Then he walked past her and he didn't even look her way.
It took everything she had not to grab his hair from behind and slam him into the pavement right there. The restraint almost made her teeth hurt.
"Is he pretending to not see me?"
Because of this, she ditched training and turned around and started following him. But Ares was walking faster than she expected.
Nile... she was small, fierce, but had a small frame at the end of the day and because of this, she kept getting swallowed by the crowd. People brushed past her, blocking her view.
"Move!" she demanded under her breath as she shoved her way through.
Luckily, she caught sight of him again. She locked onto his figure and followed him across the academy grounds until he entered the digital library.
She stepped inside just seconds after him, then paused near the entrance to watch.
Ares wasn't alone anymore.
He had met up with someone.
Wasn't that the guy she threw out first during the test?
Rick.
Nile stared at them, confused.
"Why would someone as strong as him hang out with a powerless person?"
Rick wasn't just weak, he was the lowest she'd seen. The kind of student who barely survived round one in combat trials.
Shouldn't Ares be a bully type?
Someone who hung out with the other strong kids?
Someone who pushed weaker people aside?
It didn't make sense.
She kept watching from behind another shelf. After a while, another student joined them.
Axel.
He was also in the test with her, but he wasn't exactly memorable to her until now. She remembered how he knocked Kinsey out cleanly and how confident he had looked.
A group of three now.
Nile narrowed her eyes.
Just then, the first year section doors slid open and another girl walked out.
Kinsey.
Nile watched the way Rick and Ares moved closer to Axel. They didn't attack Kinsey, but their posture… their tone… Nile saw enough to understand.
They were cornering her.
Three against one.
She didn't like Kinsey.
She didn't care about Kinsey.
But she hated unfairness.
She wasn't going to sit back and let something like that happen.
Not while she was standing right there.
*****