Luke didn't know what he expected from motor coordination training, but it definitely wasn't what Sakura had him do.

She led him to the dojo, told him to watch, and started performing a beautiful set of movements that could win a medal in an artistic gymnastics competition. She jumped, twisted, got on the tip of her toes, and ended with a triple somersault that left his jaw hanging.

"This is your end goal," she said breathlessly, sweat on her face. "Let's start." She immediately stood up in the starting position.

Luke was absolutely sure he couldn't do that no matter how much he trained, but he had asked her for a training plan. If he could do one tenth of that, his agility stat would certainly improve. So he stood beside her and copied her position.

"Straighten your back," she ordered. He obeyed. "Relax your shoulders. Good. Now move like this until you are in this position." She showed him the move slowly so he could follow. "No, your arms aren't in sync. Do it slower until you get it right. Legs up."

A hellish training the likes of which Luke had never seen before followed.

"I think... I hate you..." Luke said between haggard breaths.

He was sweating buckets, lying on the tatami for the second time that day. Sakura was a hard taskmistress that paid attention to the smallest details.

He hadn't even gotten any stat increase for his troubles. It seemed that as weak as his body had been before, it had been close to growing stronger when the system appeared. Now that the stats had already grown though, it would take hard work for improvements, no matter the advantages of his hybrid race.

She was standing nearby and smiled slightly. "Now you know how I felt when you were teaching me. If you're up to it, we can spar everyday after tea and exercise after. And now we can bathe, dine, and study."

Japanese culture was said to be very rigid, and Luke could see it now. It didn't even cross her mind to just relax a little. But it was alright with him. He had 6 months to get ready for whatever was coming. He wanted to be in peak condition by then.

That reminded him: he had to warn the world. He had almost forgot about it in the confusion of his fear for Jackson and his grandad's disease. Jackson was gone already though. It sucked that his grandad was forcing Luke to go to school, but studying definitely didn't matter. He wasn't sure what the system had in stock for Earth when it became fully functional, but he doubted the world would be able to ignore it. School would likely be the least of his worries.

Especially if the Demonic Horde was coming.

Which also meant he didn't need to study at all. He felt a little stupid for paying some attention to class the day before, but comforted himself with the fact that he had been waiting for his willpower fatigue to decrease and had had nothing better to do anyway.

Anyway, warning the world.

"I need to talk to you about something," he told Sakura, but his stomach chose that moment to grumble. He blushed. "After dinner."

Sakura smiled a little wider, still not showing her teeth, and nodded. "See you in thirty minutes." She turned and left.

He breathed deeply for a while, then stood up and went to take a bath.

Luke, wearing clean sweatpants and a black T-shirt, held a burp in as he finished eating from the banquet at the table. Really, how much did all that cost? Did they eat like kings every single day?

"What did you want to talk about?" Sakura asked. "Is it related to your meditation sessions during class?"

"Oh, you noticed that? It's not. Not directly, anyway, but both the 'meditation' and what I have to say have to do with the memories in my mind." She nodded seriously. He took a deep breath. "Demons and monsters are coming to Earth. Probably."

She just looked at him in silence for a while, as if waiting for him to continue. At a point, she frowned. "That's it? Are you kidding me?"

"No."

"I..." She sighed. "We checked your past. You never learned how to fight, and now you're an expert. I can believe you got your skills out of nowhere. I can even believe you also got some memories about ki manipulation together with the fighting skills because they are related. I would even believe if you told me you plan on starting World War III with elite warriors trained using your memories. But a prophecy about monsters? That seems a bit far fetched."

"You investigated me?" That made sense if they had a hidden agenda involving him, but it was still strange to hear and felt very invasive.

"Yes," she said firmly. "My uncle insisted that we use some of his funds and influence to help your grandfather and you. He has significant power in the clan, so we had to make sure you weren't ill-intentioned and trying to use us. You would do the same to protect your family if you could."

Luke had to admit she had a point. It still didn't make things right though. "You invaded my privacy."

"That's debatable. Is it private if we got information by asking people you had contact with? We got information about your bullying episodes from your colleagues in school. We learned about your past routine from your former neighbors. We never spied on you, read your emails, used our influence to check your school grades, or anything of the kind. That would be a crime, and the US government is already making things hard for the Akira clan without that to blackmail us as well."

He frowned. She had a point, but it didn't make it any easier. Knowing people had investigated his past made him uncomfortable to say the least.

Still, he decided to put it to the side for now. The priority was explaining the truth about the incoming danger...

Or was it?

He wanted to warn her because she was her friend, but she was calling him a liar to his face, telling him they had investigated him, and wasn't even sorry for it. He had confided in her, and she couldn't trust him back?

His phoenix heart sent a heat wave through him. Though it didn't have any effect by itself, it distracted him from his line of thought enough to let him think something else: he was being a dick.

Luke's trust in Sakura didn't mean she had to trust him back. That had been his decision, and his alone. If he required her to repay his trust for her, he would be a terrible friend. Just as he would be a terrible friend if he blamed her family for being aware of strangers or if he didn't warn her of the impending doom.

"I understand your family had a good reason to check my past." He took a deep breath. "But it saddens me to hear you call me a liar. Why would I lie? I have nothing to gain from it."

"Who knows? People lie for stupid reasons all the time. Maybe it's just a prank. A prank I'm not falling for."

"I'm not lying," he said, getting a bit annoyed. "And it's not a prophecy, it's a deadline. I know for a fact that it's happening because I have access to privileged information."

He understood what she had meant about prophecies not working like that. The tower had prophecy-like skills, and they were almost always vague at best, a double-edged sword. He felt he shouldn't trust any prophecy if he ever came into contact with one. It seemed Earth had something like that too if she knew they were untrustworthy.

"What information?" she asked.

Luke opened his mouth to tell her about the system but thought better about it. If she was doubting him already, telling her he had access to something out of a game system would sound like fiction.

Thinking about it, there was nothing he could really say that would make her believe him. He had to prove he had access to information she hadn't, and that was different from fighting or the parlor trick she called ki manipulation.

He had an idea. "The meditations you mentioned. I'm doing something with my soul using mana, what you call ki. When it's done, I'll show you something. That'll prove that I know more than you imagine. Until then, I just ask you to consider what you should do if I'm not lying and there is a horde of monsters coming to Earth. Who you should talk to in your family and, more importantly, how to reveal it to the world so they will believe it and can be better prepared for it."

She kept silent for another long while, then sighed again. "When will you finish doing whatever you're doing?"

"Two to three weeks." Originally, it would take him about a month to build all his mana channels and cast a spell, but his faster recovery from willpower fatigue had halved that time. He still asked for a little extra time just in case something went wrong though.

"Alright. For one month, I'll think about what I would do to prepare the world for a monster invasion. God, even saying it aloud feels stupid. But when you fail to convince me, I expect an apology. This prank is ridiculous."

He smiled sadly. "I would like an apology too." His eyes wanted to tear up, but he held it in. To be honest, it hurt to be treated like that by someone he was opening his heart to. He stood up. "Good night." When he spoke, he failed to stop himself from tearing up. He saw her face soften up an instant before turning and leaving.

"Luke..." Sakura called with a soft voice, but he didn't stop.

Back in the room, Luke first called his grandad with his new phone. No one picked it up, so he called Mr. Akira instead.

The man answered quickly. "Yes?"

"Mr. Akira, it's Luke. My granddad is not picking up my call."

"Good night, Mr. Kells. The doctors are examinating Arthur. I can ask him to call you when he's done."

"Oh. No, it's alright. I just wanted to check up on him. I'll try again tomorrow."

"Very well." There was a pause. "Anything else? I'm slightly busy with family matters at the moment."

"No, no. Sorry for bothering you. Thank you, good night."

"You can call me anytime to ask about your grandfather, you don't need to apologize. Good night." He hung up.

With that out of the way, Luke sat down and worked on his core. He kept going until he had a faint headache from willpower fatigue. Then he set up his alarm clock and went to sleep.

That night, he had nightmares of abandonment and betrayals.

Luke and Sakura's relationship was strained next morning. They talked only a little about superfluous things and sat separately during class.

She still kept him company at the break though, they trained together after school, and she spotted for him in his strength workout. That workout was much more traditional, involving weight-lifting and the use of the equipment in the Akira private gym.

Luke learned then that exercising was hard. Doing the same movement over and over was also boring. To be completely honest, if Sakura wasn't there, he wouldn't have pushed to his absolute best despite the threat of demonic invasion in half a year.

Thankfully, she was there, and she didn't let him slack off.

He managed to talk to his grandad that night. The man was tired from traveling, but claimed the doctors were confident about his treatment. He couldn't tell Luke what "being confident" meant though.

Friday started much like the previous two days. It seemed nothing would change until they climbed to the rooftop after lunch. A little after they went through the door, someone slammed it behind them.

"You fucking beggar," a male voice said from behind Luke and Sakura. "You think you can just make me disappear?" Luke turned to see Jackson and nothing less than seven football jocks standing there. "And you, bitch. You think your fucking yellow family can protect you here? This is America, and it's time to teach you a lesson about freedom." He smiled sadistically at Luke. "I said I would break your limbs, didn't I?"

Jackson, Miller, Jones, and Davis were not wearing the school uniform, but jeans and T-shirt instead. Luke hadn't really thought about it, but it seemed Mr. Akira had also gotten rid of the other boys. Jackson had a bandaged hand because of his broken finger, and Jones had a purple face and a plastered arm. The latter seemed a bit extreme for just dislodging a joint, but Luke wasn't a doctor. Last but not least, Davis had some cuts on his forearm from where the trash bin had hit.

Luke and Sakura stepped back. If the jocks attacked together, two versus eight would be a bit much no matter how well the two could fight. Luke's stats were too lacking and Sakura's battle experience wasn't up to it despite her improvements in the past two days.

"I'll try to hold them off," Luke whispered. "You find an opportunity to run." He was used to getting beaten and could recover from injuries faster than her thanks to the phoenix heart. It only made sense for him to suffer for them both. As long as he didn't die, everything would be okay.

Sakura snickered in reply. Then she took her smartphone and pointed the camera at the boys. "I'm streaming this. We don't want to fight. We politely ask that you leave us alone."

Luke was dumbfounded for a moment that she had prepared such a thing. Of course, you could get away like that too. He was still thinking like a bullied guy, to whom the only way out any situation involved getting beaten up.

But Jackson's reply surprised Luke even more. "Guess what, bitch? I'm a minor. Nothing will happen to me as long as you keep breathing." He pointed at them. "Give 'em hell."