A month dissolved into a gray, suffocating routine.
Leo's life became a bizarre exercise in patience. Eight hours a day, he sat in a fifth-grade classroom, forcing himself not to scream with boredom as thirty ten-year-olds learned long division. He was an adult man trapped in a world of juice boxes and petty playground squabbles.
The orphanage was even worse. To survive there, Leo perfected the art of invisibility. He learned which floorboards creaked, which hallways the older bullies favored, and how to eat his gray oatmeal quickly and silently. He became a ghost in the system, ignored by the overworked staff and overlooked by the other children.
But in the secret corners of his day, he worked.
Knowing he couldn't rely on a power he didn't have yet, Leo began training his new body. Every night, before the other boys returned to the dorm, he did push-ups until his small arms shook and sit-ups until his abs burned. He ran laps around the cracked asphalt of the orphanage play yard during recess until his lungs ached.
He was still scrawny, but he was slowly, methodically hardening his ten-year-old frame. If he never awakened an ability, he'd at least make sure his body could run away faster.
Yet, the frustration mounted. Every night, he meditated. He sat in the dark, searching internally for... anything. He tried to focus heat into his palms, hoping for fire. He tried to will his vision to zoom in, hoping for enhanced sight. He tried to feel a surge of strength in his muscles.
And every night: nothing. He was searching a pitch-black room for a light switch he wasn't even sure existed.
Then came a Tuesday that started just as numbingly boring as any other.
Leo was sitting near the back of the yellow school bus, his forehead resting against the vibrating window glass as they navigated the dense afternoon traffic of Azure City back toward Sector 4. The bus was a chaotic din of shouting children, but Leo tuned it out, watching the futuristic cityscape roll by.
The bus lurched to a sudden halt.
Up ahead, traffic had snarled. Two cars were stopped awkwardly in the middle of a major intersection—a sleek, expensive-looking sedan and a beat-up delivery truck. It looked like a standard fender-bender at first. Two men were shouting at each other in the street.
"You cut me off, you lunatic!" yelled the driver of the sedan, a man with striking, snow-white hair and an expensive suit.
"Watch where you're going, rich boy!" bellowed the truck driver. He was already a large man, thick-necked and wearing a stained undershirt.
Leo watched with mild interest. Even in a fantasy world, road rage was universal.
But then, the truck driver's face turned a violent shade of purple. He threw his head back and let out a roar that shook the windows of the school bus a hundred feet away.
A collective gasp went through the bus.
The man's skin rippled. With a sickening tearing sound, his undershirt shredded as muscles billowed outward like rapidly inflating balloons. Within seconds, he had grown two feet taller, his skin turning a leathery gray, his humanity swallowed by raw, hulking brute force.
A low-tier Brute-type awakening. Common among street thugs in the novel.
The transformed monster lunged.
The white-haired man didn't run. He threw his hands up, and the air temperature plummeted. Moisture in the air flash-froze, creating a jagged, crystalline shield of thick ice between him and the charging giant.
The impact sounded like a cannon blast. The Brute smashed into the ice shield, shattering it into a thousand glittering razors. The force of the blow continued through, catching the white-haired man square in the chest. He was launched backward like a ragdoll, crashing onto the hood of his own expensive car, crumpling the metal.
Chaos erupted. On the bus, children started screaming. The bus driver, pale-faced, slammed open the doors.
"Everyone off! Off the bus! Head for the subway station entrance! Move!"
The children stampeded for the door. Outside, pedestrians were scattering like ants, abandoning cars and running for cover.
Leo stood up, but he didn't run. His heart was hammering against his ribs, a massive dump of adrenaline flooding his small system. This wasn't fear. It was electric excitement.
He had read about these fights for two years. Now, he was seeing it live. The raw power, the destruction, the terrifying reality of abilities unleashed—it was mesmerizing.
The Brute, breathing heavily, turned from his defeated opponent. His small, piggy eyes scanned the chaotic street for a new target or leverage against the police who would surely arrive soon. They locked onto the bright yellow school bus.
They locked onto Leo, standing alone in the open doorway.
The Brute roared and charged, sprinting straight toward the lone child.
The ground shook with each of the monster's footsteps. Leo's excitement instantly evaporated, replaced by paralyzing terror.
His adult mind screamed: MOVE! RUN!
His ten-year-old legs refused to obey. They turned to jelly. The sheer, primal intimidation of eight feet of enraged muscle barreling toward him was overwhelming.
The Brute was twenty feet away. Ten feet. He reached out a massive gray hand, big enough to crush Leo's skull like a grape. Leo squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the impact that would end his second life.
Schwoomp.
A strange sound, like heavy rope whipped through the air, followed by a grunt of surprise from the monster.
The impact never came.
Leo opened his eyes.
The Brute was stopped dead, five feet away. He was struggling furiously, bellowing in rage. Thick, fibrous wooden vines, thick as a man's arm, had erupted from cracks in the asphalt. They were wrapped tightly around his ankles, waist, and massive arms, immobilizing him completely.
A figure dropped from the sky, landing silently on the roof of the bus above Leo. She was clad in a practical green and brown tactical suit.
"Command, this is Arboria. Sector 4 intersection. Rogues subdued. Send cleanup crews."
Arboria. A mid-rank professional Hero specialized in urban containment.
She looked down at Leo from the bus roof. "You okay, kid? You're cut."
Leo touched his cheek. A shard of ice must have nicked him; his fingers came away bloody. He hadn't even felt it. He nodded mutely, too terrified to speak.
A thick vine unspooled from Arboria's wrist, gently wrapping around Leo's waist and lowering him to the sidewalk as if he weighed nothing.
"Go join your class over by the subway," she said briskly, already turning her attention back to the struggling Brute.
Leo stumbled away, joining the huddle of crying children. He looked back at the carnage—the wrecked cars, the shattered ice, the massive wooden vines.
He had wanted to see this world. He had just gotten a front-row seat. And he realized, with chilling clarity, that without an ability of his own, he was just fodder waiting to be crushed.