Luke found Jackson's reaction quite out of place. The boy was always cool-headed when making decisions and would rather step back from a disadvantageous position than be reckless. The way he had retreated in the class when Sakura first told him off was such a case.

Thing is, Jackson knew better than to put his parents on the spot. A judge and a congresswoman had a lot to lose if their child got involved in a big scandal. And if they lost a lot, he would lose even more, since he depended on their influence to go unpunished for his deeds.

So, to put it simply, Jackson was making his own life harder for very little gain. He had beaten Luke a lot already. Breaking a couple extra limbs wouldn't make much of a difference even as revenge, and he could always try again in later date.

Well, that hadn't happened. Jackson had decided to act recklessly today. Luke was only glad the boy had confirmed there would be no deaths, only some broken bones.

Six goons were advancing, while Jackson and Jones stayed behind. They were all football players in peak condition, their muscles stretching their clothes. Luke and Sakura kept walking back.

"Run when I give the signal," he whispered.

Sakura hadn't expected Jackson's decision either and was a bit pale. Luke could guess she was used to being on top in most situations and couldn't deal with suddenly finding herself the target of imminent beating with no way to avoid it except by sacrificing Luke.

Her answer was to tap some things in her smartphone. She kept it pointed at the boys, still streaming. There was the sound of a phone ringing, and someone picked up her call.

"Yes, Ms. Akira?" a male answered on the speakerphone. Luke recognized Tom's voice.

"I'm under attack at the rooftop," she said.

Tom replied at once. "En route. ETA two minutes."

Luke and Sakura had moved backwards so much they hit their backs on the rooftop's low wall. The rooftop was equipped with a fence, so he didn't need to worry about being pushed down.

Sakura hung up the phone. "You heard him, my bodyguards are coming. Just let us go and no one will get hurt."

"You did heard her," Jackson said mockingly, "we gotta be quick. Ignore her and fuck up Kells fast."

There were about a dozen other students at the rooftop. By now, they were all watching the commotion, some of them filming too. Not caring about witnesses was also unlike Jackson. Something was very wrong. However, Luke had no time to worry about that. The six jocks were closing in from all sides.

He had to fight.

"Do you want to get expelled?" Sakura said, but her voice didn't have as much bite as before. "You'll never play football again!"

Two of them hesitated at that. The other four kept coming.

When they were two meters from Luke, he acted. "Now!" he yelled to Sakura and rushed at the closest jock.

The guy raised his arms defensively, so Luke played dirty. He kicked him in the nuts. That made him immediately lower his guard as he moved both hands to the affected area. Luke then punched him straight in the jaw, making sure to do it in the perfect spot to jolt his sinus and shake his brain.

He dropped unconscious at once.

The other three hadn't been idle. One of them tackled Luke, who managed to dodge to the side by twisting his body. He rose his elbow while twisting and hit the nose of the guy closest to him, taking him temporarily out of the fight. That left two, one of which Sparta-kicked him.

He saw it coming. His mind told his body what to do. He even started getting out of the way.

But his body was too slow to dodge completely.

That was the issue with facing multiple people at the same time. Doing something against someone meant leaving openings to another. Without enough agility, he was just a sitting duck. He couldn't just defend either because they were so much stronger and heavier than him.

Still, he had way too much battle experience for that to be enough. The kick hit his waist and pushed him out of balance. Rather than trying to balance himself not to fall, which would leave him open for yet another attack, he threw himself to the ground, rolled, and stood up again at the end of the roll. His Awareness let him notice the sound of steps of someone getting closer on his back.

Luke jumped, rotating his body so his knee would hit the face of the incoming attacker.

The resulting hit was a bit more brutal than he wanted. The guy hadn't expected Luke to react at all, and had tried to tackle him without protecting his face, throwing himself at Luke with his full weight and speed behind it. Luke felt a nose and a couple teeth break as they made contact with his knee, which hurt a lot in return.

"Oooooowww," a chorus echoed from the onlookers.

The only unharmed boy of the four who had come for Luke hesitated, and Luke took the chance to check on his surroundings.

The guy he had attacked first was still unconscious and wouldn't wake up anytime soon. The second had just recovered from the elbow to the nose and was ready for revenge. The guy he had kneed in the face would take probably longer than the two minutes Tom would take to arrive to recover from that. And the fourth one was afraid.

That had gone better than expected. It wasn't that he had underestimated his muscle memory and fighting instincts, but that he had thought all eight guys would attack together. He could take four of them easily.

Even back in the alley he would've been able to defeat both Davis and Jackson. However, back then, he had been afraid. Today, he had Sakura and her family to protect him from Jackson's family, so he didn't worry about the repercussions of defending himself anymore.

Now that two were out of the fight, the two who had stayed out of it could even join too if they wanted. Speaking of which, what were they doing?

He regretted checking at once.

One of them had a bleeding nose and was kneeling on the ground, holding his privates with both hands. The other, however, had grabbed Sakura. It seemed she had tried to help Luke rather than run, and though she should be able to deal with two guys, sparring and actual fight were different things. It was natural for her to mess up in a school brawl without muscle memory like Luke's.

He ran at her to help at once. One of the jocks stood on his way. Luke feinted to the right, rotated his body to the left, and bypassed the dude, but that small delay had been enough for Jackson to arrive by Sakura's side.

He had a new knife with him, and its blade was resting by her neck.

"Surrender, now," he ordered with icy fury obviously burning inside him. "You know I can get away with it."

"Dude, that's fucked up. We aren't—" a jock started saying, but Jackson interrupted.

"Shut up!" he yelled. "Grab him! He won't resist!"

And indeed, Luke didn't move as someone grabbed his arms

"Luke, no!" Sakura yelled. "He's bluffing! He can't touch me!"

Luke also thought it was likely a bluff, but why risk it? Jackson was acting too wild, and that worried Luke. If he was being unreasonable enough to risk his parents' influence, he might even be drugged or something, and willing to doing something much more stupid.

Anyway, they just wanted to break some of his bones, while she had a blade close to her neck.

He would exchange limbs for a life any day of the week.

Even as someone was holding Luke tightly, Jackson didn't immediately move his knife from Sakura's throat, knowing from experience that Luke could escape if there was no hostage being threatened. He just gestured with his head, and Jones approached to take the knife and replace Jackson while the latter got closer to Luke.

"Hold his legs on the ground," Jackson ordered. Two guys obeyed, one on each leg.

Jackson approached and Luke could swear he saw the boy's eyes shine red an instant before he stomped on one of Luke's knee.

It gave out at once.

Luke yelled in pain and Davis, who had been holding the leg that was stomped, spat on his mouth again. Luke had no idea what kind of sick bastard liked to spit in other people's mouth like that.

Before he could recover, Jackson stomped his other knee. He screamed again.

"Drop him on the ground and hold his arms," Jackson ordered, and they obeyed.

This time, it was Jones who approached and stomped Luke's arms. Repeatedly. Forearm, elbow, upper arm, even the shoulder. Jones was pissed at having his upper arm dislocated, and viciously tried to make sure Luke's arms would never recover.

Meanwhile, Davis and Jackson were also stomping on Luke's legs, breaking every last bone in them.

"Ms. Akira!" Tom yelled in the distance.

That was the signal for a torturer to kick Luke in the chin.

Darkness followed.

For the second time that week, Luke woke up after fainting during a beating. This time, his entire body was filled with a throbbing pain. From head to toe, hand to hand, everything hurt, so it seemed they had also kicked him some more on the body after Tom arrived.

Luke opened his eyes— His eye, singular. A bandage was covering the other one. He found himself in a white hospital room, alone, with equipment beside his bed and an IV on his arm. He had difficulty checking everything due to the cervical collar on his neck, but he forced himself to take in his surroundings. The comfy armchair beside his bed looked expensive, the black and silver digital clock on the wall even more so, and one of the walls was made of glass, now covered by curtains.

This place was way too fancy for him. He guessed the Akira were paying the bill.

His arms and legs were immobilized. His plastered arms were held sideways and up by a string of bandages. There was no one in the room with him. The world was spinning; he was obviously medicated.

He closed his eyes, and sleep found him quickly.

Luke woke up again to an argument.

"This is ridiculous!" Sakura, wearing a beautiful blue dress, was almost yelling. "I have proof that he acted in self-defense!"

"That is not for you to decide," a raspy voice said. "We need to ask him some questions."

He opened his eye to see two cops in the room. One of them, who looked very old, was pushing a very angry Sakura out of the room. The other, a stereotypical fat cop, was holding handcuffs and looking at Luke as if trying to decide how to fasten him to the bed.

"Luke!" she yelled when she saw him open his eyes. "Don't worry, I'll deal with it!"

"Yeah, yeah," the old cop said. He finally managed to push her out of the glass door, closed it behind her, and closed the curtains.

The fat cop seemed to come to a decision and just put the handcuffs away. Luke had no idea what had taken him so long, as Luke obviously couldn't run away.

The world was still spinning. He wanted to ask the doctors to take the medicine away; his phoenix heart could take care of him well enough. The pain was still terrible, but not as bad as when he had first woken up.

"So you're the delinquent who goes around picking up fights and kicking innocent people at school," the old thin cop said. Luke read his name tag, Lt. Jones. He had heard Jones' father and grandfather were police officers, and it seemed that was true.

There was no point discussing anything with the man. He closed his eye to rest, but heard Lt. Jones stepping closer.

A slap on the face sent a piercing pain through Luke's head.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you," Lt. Jones said.

Luke did as told. It seemed being an asshole ran in the family.

"You're huwting me," he said, his slurred because of the medicine, and a swollen mouth and tongue. "Stop please." He had read somewhere that unless you told a cop something like that, they could argue they didn't know they were crossing the line.

The answer was an even harder slap that made his head ring. "What did you say?" There was an obvious threat to his voice.

Now, that was beyond his experience. Wannabe-warrior or not, Luke had no way to protect himself. Even if his limbs hadn't been broken, the guy was a police officer, for fuck's sake. He wasn't sure of how true some of the movies with corrupt cops were, but he wasn't willing to find out how far an armed man used to deal with criminals would go to protect a child of their family.

The instincts honed over two years of being tortured were practically going haywire telling him to obey, and as someone who wanted to survive, he listened to them.

"Sowwy," he said.

Lt. Jones smiled wickedly. "That's it, know your place." He slapped Luke's face again, this time not as hard, but it was still painful. "I'm here to tell you what you're going to do. You're going to say you provoked the boys at school and attacked them first off camera, just as you did in the camera." He snapped his finger and the fat cop produced his smartphone from his pocket. "I want a full confession of how you made their life hell at school. You practically forced them to stick together to try to break free from your tyranny."

Luke tried to nod, but failed to do so. Instead, he said, "Yes, shir."

He knew better than to resist. Tomorrow could wait. He was actually afraid for his life right now.

"Good boy," Lt. Jones said. "Start."

The fat cop put the smartphone in front of Luke and tapped. Luke took a deep—and painful—breathe, and started, "My name ish Luke Kellsh, and I'm a bully. Yeshtewday, I offended and attacked shome colleagues off-camera, as I did the wwole year. I like sheeing zem shuffer. I tewwowized zem sho much, they banded together to talk to me. Then I offended zem more and attacked zem more, and zey decided it was enough. It was all my fault. I'm sowwy."

The fat pig—Sgt. Dickens—tapped the smartphone again, finishing the recording, and Lt. Jones patted Luke's leg forcefully. Pain shot through his body. "Not bad, not bad. But you can do better, can't you? You aren't a bully, you're a sociopath. Give me details of the attacks you commited. Nasty details. It's not the first time you kicked people in the balls, is it? You like breaking noses too. And you're not sorry. You're an evil bastard."

Luke swallowed. "Yesh, shir."

"Good boy, good boy. Record."

Sgt. started recording. Luke started talking. That wasn't the final version of his "confession." They only left after almost two hours of painful slaps and recordings, when they decided they had the perfect video.

After they left, Sakura entered the room and rushed to Luke's side. "Are you okay? Did they hurt you too much? Do you want me to call the doctors?"

Her face was flushed and her hair slightly messy. She had really worried about him. She was now standing beside him with a lot of worry on her eyes, clenching the bed's grate so firmly her knuckles were going white.

He didn't know why, but that scene warmed his heart.

"Gosh, you are sho damn beautiful," he said absentmindedly.

An instant later, he realized what he had just done. He felt his face get hot while her eyes went wide before she also blushed.

"Sowwy," he said quickly. "Pleashe, ashk ze doctors to take ze medichine away. It's making me dizzy." He had wanted to get rid of it even before basically confessing to her, but now it was a priority. He simply couldn't think straight. Speaking of which, only now did he notice something in her words. "Wait. How do you know zey hit me?"

She kept silent for a while, then bit her lower lip, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes again, Luke could tell she had decided to ignore what he had said about her beauty. He thanked the heavens for it. The last thing he needed was to lose his only friend because he was an idiot.

"This is not the family's first rodeo with corrupt government officials." Sakura said.

She took her smartphone from her dress' pocket, unlocked it, and showed him the screen. It showed them, being filmed by a hidden camera. Luke looked around with difficulty until his eyes rested on the clock on the wall.

"Getting the victim to make a fake confession is the most basic trick in the dirty cop book." She bit her lower lip. "I'm sorry you had to suffer a little, but that was the best way to deal with them. My bodyguards were just outside the room and would've rushed in if something really bad happened."

"Zanks." He tried to smile but it was painful and he just gave up on it. "Ze medichine?"

"I'll talk to them, but they said they're worried about your fever. It's not going away."

Luke understood the issue at once. His phoenix heart increased his body's temperature by an average of two to five degrees. It should be harmful to his body, but the heart had actually changed his physiology a little already, and the more he leveled up, the more his temperature would increase and his body would change to accomodate. He was called a phoenix-hybrid for a reason.

"Don't wowwy about it. I can exshplain later. Jusht take it away pleashe."

The dizziness from the medicine would affect his ability to use mana, and he expected to stay on bed for at least a couple weeks—his phoenix heart was miraculous to speed up his healing, but it was limited by his humanity. Luke couldn't just rest all that time. He needed to control mana to finish building his mana channels.

Broken bones or not, his grandad's life still depended on him.