“Look, brother, a cattleya trianae!”

“A what?” Laughter.

“It’s a flower, a may lily. The proper name for it.”

“What are you doing to it?”

“Preserving it with tape. I’m putting it in my book. So I can keep it forever.”

“There’s room under it.”

“That’s for writing. I’m going to describe it. Make observations.”

“You’re so bright, Luci!”

“Put me down! I’m not five anymore!” She is squealing with glee. Her smile is as pure as the noon sun, and perhaps just as dazzling.

“I’m going to make sure you enter a good school, Luci.”

“Do you mean it? Even though father…”

“I’m the oldest. I’ll inherit this place. Then you can go wherever you like.”

“I love you, Paulo.”

“Sweet dreams?”

Paulo woke to Henry Othin’s goading. He sat upright in the sofa, glancing tiredly at his surroundings. The past couple of days had been filled with work. Setting up their arms business all across this gargantuan city was taxing even for a physically gifted person like him. He was finally allowed to rest on Sunday evening in a condo Henry’s people had bought.

The spectacled man sat on the opposite sofa, eyes glued to his laptop, always watching, always manipulating. His fingers played the digital space like a pianist.

“The same old,” Paulo said after a few seconds.

“What do you dream about?”

“Frolicking in a wheat field.” Paulo got up to fix himself some coffee in the condo’s sterile white and black kitchen.

“Nothing like time off after days of honest work,” Henry remarked.

Paulo did not react, at least he thought he didn’t.

“You disagree,” Henry said.

“I don’t question,” Paulo said. The machine hissed with steam and the smell of Arabica began to permeate the air. “But where I come from we don’t involve family in our designs.”

“The mayor needed a push,” Henry said. “He needed to understand how dangerous this city is.”

“Because we’re here?”

“What we’re doing is a controlled detonation of sorts. We need to be free from heroes. The people need to be self-reliant. Otherwise, when disaster comes, we won’t be able to help ourselves from atrophying while they grow even stronger.”

“So we’re going to keep doing this?” Paulo asked. “Trigger accidents? Put civilians in danger?”

“Before something worse happens,” Henry said. “And us ungifted lose our culture forever.”

He paused his work to look out the wall of windows the condo sported, facing downtown. Zeppelins carrying giant screens with hero-themed advertisements floated about. Other balloons were mobile hubs for delivery drones, facilitating consumption. Endless consumption. The city unfolded like steel-glass prisms, covered in a sheet of purposeful gaudiness that was invisible to its people. The windows briefly rattled in their bindings as a caped figure flew between the buildings, leaving behind a subsonic wave of air in their wake. People on balconies far away waved.

“They’re not actually supposed to fly below buildings,” Henry said. “It causes a disturbance. Except people don’t mind, so they’re not reprimanded. And what’s the point of a law that people don’t mind when it’s encroached? They just walk all over us, fly all over us, and we love them for it. It wasn’t this bad seven years ago.”

“What happened to you?” Paulo said.

Henry returned to his screen. “Another time,” he said.

“Come on, you know my story,” Paulo said. “Why do you hate them so much?”

“I don’t hate them,” Henry said. “Hate is childish. I understand them.”

“Sounds enlightened.” Paulo sipped his coffee, which he enjoyed black. Though the beans here were not as rich as the kind back home.

“I’ll tell you if the boss’s plan succeeds,” Henry said.

“Oookay.”

“If it works, we can take it higher, farther, closer to-”

“The heart of this nation, I know,” Paulo said. “I know.”

--

Lyssa had to focus. It was a balancing act to keep Eury at a distance, but close enough to feel her control feed through her nerves. Controlling jets of force-fire was like strapping rockets to her extremities. If she fused with Eury, things would be a lot easier, but she didn’t know how they would separate.

She flew clumsily above the pillars, struggling to keep herself from falling into the chasm and staying below the range of the anti-air cannons. To one side, students made careful jumps from pillar to pillar. To the other, an icy bridge had been erected over the chasm, skipping the pillars entirely. The structure dripped with fog and showed no signs of melting. Students used it to cross, but Lyssa noticed they moved carefully while on it.

She extinguished the force-fire when she made the crossing, tumbling onto the dirt. Only a kilometer ahead, a derelict cityscape awaited. She could already hear the multitudes of explosions and shattering material echo from the artificial, grey walls.

Lyssa waited for a moment. She was already breathing hard. Despite careful management, her gifts simply burned too much energy. It didn’t help that she had only awakened to them a month ago. She took a moment to examine the bridge of ice that had been left behind. It must have come from that rather frigid student Lyssa took note of at the starting line. Maybe there was something she could learn about her gift.

The bridge was a pure white, and looked like a gnarled tree root, or like the frothing crash of a violent river frozen in time. Lyssa touched one of its many spiky protrusions and immediately recoiled with an involuntary cry. There was a reddening mark on her finger where she had made contact. She stepped away from the bridge in alarm.

It was made of dry ice. A cold that made the tundra seem like a Saharan summer. Any wetness was brief, quickly rejoining the atmosphere where it belonged.

“I would just avoid that woman,” Eury’s flippant voice spoke in her mind.

A yelp echoed from a student somewhere on the bridge, no doubt from accidently touching the structure’s terrible surface. Lyssa decided to keep moving.

The path descended towards the city ahead. Lyssa jogged the way there. She took deep breaths, careful not to aggravate her already burning throat by hyperventilating. Meanwhile the announcers continued to play up the events unfolding ahead. An enormous serpentine machine could be seen chewing through an old skyscraper. Shards of the building fell. Its motion seemed slow, as if time moved languidly there and there alone. The machine curled tighter, and the scenario reached a climax. Sight predated sound. Lyssa saw it shatter moments before she heard it. The entire building had snapped in half, and the serpentine machine began to dive towards the ground again. Until a flash of white slammed into both the falling skyscraper and the metal worm. A frozen tsunami had sprouted from a point on the ground, stopping the fall dead. A moment later the air itself warbled as an invisible force tore the resulting abstract statue down.

Lyssa did not look forward to the battlefield ahead. The announcers seemed ecstatic from the safety of their booths.

Oh my god- did- did you see that!?

I’m right next to you, Tim. I think we have found our rivals to young Colossi.

I can’t even see where he is under all that smoke!

This is why this is my personal favorite game. The first game was a test of endurance. Everyone was conserving their energy, hiding their cards. You can’t do that here!

No, no. Not with those things in play.

What are those things?

I think they’re called Earthdragons? Some newfangled mining or tunneling machine.

The fight’s not over yet. If only that damn smoke would clear.

Wonder if any students got caught under that.

She did not know if it was concern or morbid curiosity, but Lyssa grasped her telepathy to search the collateral mess ahead. Bildungsroman was as recalcitrant as ever.

“You’re better off minding yourself,” Bil echoed.

“Doesn’t matter anyway, does it?” Lyssa said. “I’m not even the original. Just humor me.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t, since you’re not the original.”

“But I am the Primum.” Lyssa hardened her mental tone. “And I intend to own this hierarchy.”

“…Let’s see if that newfound conviction is vacuous.”

Lyssa felt the heavy rush of psychic awareness pour into her perception. She could feel hundreds of thoughts in the distance. A lot of panic, a lot of pain, none were extinguished so far. A few were extremely stressed. Those emanated from the center of the destruction.

“Wait a minute…”

She recognized the feel of their minds. Two in particular, coming from underneath the pile of ice and stone and steel. Lyssa forgot her fatigue and broke into a sprint. Bil slipped away, but not without a last word.

“I wonder how long her vines and that insect strength would last.”