Rowan was tailing behind me on the walk home. Close enough that I knew he was there, quiet enough that he was either sulking or working through something he hadn't found words for yet.
I could still see the mark on his face. The one I'd put there. And honestly, sitting with that, I still thought he'd earned it. He'd come to me asking to learn how to fight. He'd made that specific request.
And then the first time someone showed up and the alternative was available to him— he'd dropped to his knees and offered to apologise for both of us. Like none of it had happened. Like he hadn't spent the last week convincing himself he wanted to be different.
"About earlier—"
"Don't." I cut him off before the apology could form. "That's the last thing I need from you right now."
"Okay." He adjusted his glasses with one finger, eyes finding the pavement.
He was quiet after that. I could tell the punch had landed somewhere past the physical— in whatever space he kept the parts of himself he'd been trying to shore up.
Julian walking away without a word afterward hadn't helped. The King of East High, leaving Rowan kneeling in the dirt without so much as acknowledging him. Like the gesture had been so small it didn't warrant a response.
That was its own kind of damage.
Which was why I was walking him home rather than taking my bus. His place was nearby, mine was a trip away, and I'd decided without announcing it that he wasn't walking alone right now. Not with Julian and four others still somewhere in the vicinity with unfinished intentions.
Selfless of me. Aria would probably say something about that.
Hopefully Julian doesn't—
"There you are."
I stopped.
Julian. He was standing ahead of us with his four people arranged behind him like they'd materialized specifically to ruin the end of my day. Which, given that one of them had a teleportation ability I'd clocked during the classroom confrontation, wasn't entirely metaphorical.
"I didn't think you'd actually come yourself," I said. "For a king, that's a pretty personal errand."
Julian didn't answer that immediately. He was doing something with his expression— managing the anger, keeping it below the point where it made decisions without him. The frown lines were there but controlled.
I ran the arithmetic. One king. Four bodyguards. All of them carrying something by the look of them— the specific quality of people who didn't need to announce what they could do because they'd never had to. And Rowan was standing two steps behind me, which made him the most exposed variable in the situation.
"Should we run?" Rowan asked, voice barely above a murmur.
"We stay." I flexed my hands, felt the knuckles settle. Running was already off the table, the teleporter in Julian's crew made distance irrelevant. "What's your ability, Rowan?"
A pause. "It's... called Echo. I can replicate the last physical movement or strike that I see. But only the movement, not the force behind it. So it's not—"
"Good."
"What?"
"You asked me to teach you to fight." I still wasn't looking at him. "Lesson one. Don't hold back against a stronger opponent. Ever."
"That's not actually—"
One of Julian's crew came forward before Rowan could finish the sentence. Volt-styled hair, hands held at waist level with energy already visible between his fingers— crackling, building, the specific glow of someone whose ability was electrical and who hadn't bothered to dial it back. He moved with the confidence of someone for whom timing was a formality.
The shock punch came for my face.
"Duck." I went down and Rowan dropped with me, instinct running faster than thought.
The follow-up came immediately. Toward my neck, my jaw, my torso. He wasn't defending at all. Fully committed to offense, his guard open, apparently operating on the assumption that landing his hits was the only calculation worth making.
"Right kick, move left. Left kick, move right." I was still talking between dodges, keeping it short and sequential. "Read the pattern, memorise the rhythm. And be ready to land something the moment you see the gap."
"I think I understand—"
"Show me." I ducked under the shock guy's extended arm, grabbed it, turned, and threw him in Rowan's direction.
I wasn't sure what I expected. Something modest. A flinch, maybe, or a half-committed deflection.
Rowan hit him in the nose.
It was clean. He'd used the exact speed the guy had been throwing— Echo running the replication without hesitation. The shock guy's head snapped back. He stood there for a half-second, hand coming up to his face, processing the fact that the smaller person with glasses had just returned one of his punches to him.
Then his eyes went from confused to specific.
That was my opening. I went up, kicked him across the back, sent him off balance. He hit the ground and I moved in to finish it—
Something stopped me.
Not impact. Pressure. A force field closing around me from all sides, holding me in place like being wrapped in something solid that had no visible surface. I hit against it. It didn't move. I hit again, harder. Nothing.
The blonde one in Julian's group had both hands raised. That was the source. Barricade, probably. The kind of ability that required concentration to maintain, which meant if I could get to him I could end it, but I couldn't get to him because I was inside his ability.
The shock guy found his feet. Saw me contained. Then smiled in the way people smile when the geometry has shifted back in their favour.
He turned to Rowan.
Rowan dodged the first punch— moved the right direction, read the angle. Then a kick came into his side and he went down, the dodge window too narrow. The shock guy reached down, grabbed his collar and pulled him back upright.
Then the sound came. BZZZTTT. The shockwave running through direct contact, through Rowan's skin, his body beginning to convulse with the specific involuntary movement of electricity finding its path.
"Let him go!" The barrier muffled it but I hit the wall anyway. "Let him go right now!"
He didn't let him go. He kept going. Rowan's eyes were starting to drift, the whites showing at the edges, his face contracting with each new wave of current.
He's going to die.
I hit the barrier again. And again. My hands were hot and the force was real and it still wasn't enough.
Then something else hit me. From above and nowhere in particular. Something invisible, heavy, drove me flat against the ground and keeping me there. Every bone I had was locked. I couldn't move anything below my neck. My mouth felt like it was weighted.
I could still see Rowan. Still being shocked. Still twitching. The current wasn't stopping. His body had gone past the point of voluntary response and the guy was still applying it— not in anger anymore, just mechanically, like he'd been given a task and was completing it.
I'd told Rowan to stand his ground. I'd told him not to apologise. I'd handed him that specific instruction and he'd followed it and it had brought him here, to this street, being electrocuted by someone twice his level while I was pinned to the ground unable to stop it.
"How does it feel?" Julian was standing over me. He'd moved while I was watching Rowan, positioned himself directly above me with his hands behind his back, observing. "Watching someone who matters to you get taken apart. Does it make you angry?" He didn't need my answer. "Good. Because I'm just getting started. Everything you did to Sancho—"
"JULIAN!"
It came out of me before I'd decided to say it. His name, full volume, the anger behind it completely unmanaged. I registered my fists moving— concentrated, clenched— and then the rest happened in the wrong order for me to track it cleanly.
The force holding me to the ground disappeared. The barrier shattered. The blonde guy made a sound and went down, blood at his mouth, both hands dropping.
Just gone. All of it.
[Anomaly Identified]
[Title: Nullification]
Extra:
[Name: Julian Redgrave | Ability: Gravity Shift | Rank: A | Fortitude: 7.1]
[Name: Seth | Ability: Static | Rank: B | Fortitude: 6.7]
[Name: Dylan D.T | Ability: Barricade | Rank: B | Fortitude: 6.4]
[Name: Ren Mora | Ability: Nullification | Rank: S | Fortitude: 9.2]