Mr. Abrams started to feel content with himself after venting against Team 4. It was like a form of relief for him, after struggling for hours to hold in his repressed emotions. His final emissary of judgment against Team 4 was not even an energy – born puppet; but the team leader himself! Thanks to Lazy teleportation, any attack can be utilized by Mr. Abrams against his opponents at any given time. The ability to teleport anything anywhere, isn’t only limited to people either. He could effortlessly transport a homing attack millimeters away from his own face to nanometers away from his adversary’s. Or, he could perform the same feat with the people involved, rather than the powerful attacks themselves.

Which is the exact trick he pulled on Team 4, the ‘Vanguard’ team. He had to admit, the sun technique was pretty damn powerful. If a proper hero was engulfed by that, maybe only someone in the top 200’s or below would be capable of surviving! And that’s only considering they have an affinity to survive such death – bringing, towering levels of heat. Numbers aren’t everything, after all. A low – ranking superhero could just as easily become someone admirable in public perspective if their power allowed them to survive extreme temperature conditions, such as being forced to bathe in the sun.

But, the capability to launch a sun at someone isn’t actually a threat to Mr. Abrams puppets. For various reasons. Namely speaking, though, it’s because he can easily teleport them out of there in a heartbeat! As he did just now, however, he felt that it was a shame. That child-murdering leader worked so hard to make his little sun. SOMEBODY should take the hit, even if they would only feel the residual heat radiating off of it in air - bending glory. Team 4...aren’t they the perfect replacement for his puppets?

By controlling his amazing teleportation abilities as well as his heightened reaction time, he managed to put them directly underneath the massive sphere of solar energy for a few seconds, before teleporting them all directly inside of the sleep – enchanted hall.

A huge eruption threatened to eviscerate a massive chunk of forest, however the cool captain managed to contain its blast radius with enough effort. After all; if he lets it rise too high above the forest, ‘Heroes’ that have yet to take notice are bound to show up.

The dirt cloud caused by the solar energy sphere’s descent spread throughout the area and far throughout a 300 km radius. Deep into the earth, lay a crater. It wasn’t too large, but it’s overall radius at the very least, dwarfed half of the four thousand strong advance team. And as the dirt cloud settled, a massive crater formed from where his explosive attack landed. Luckily he managed to control it from blasting the entire battlefield! If not, forget a few dozen trees. His entire coalition team of mercenaries would have been wiped out! Rendered nothing but a few thousand piles of ash…

.

.

.

Speaking of which…

Now that the dirt smokescreen was beginning to settle: Dawan looked around confused. Where was the ash? the bodies of his team members that turned traitor for some reason, even if the skeletons disintegrated, they should still have left specks of black here and there. Well, there WAS quite a bit black ash particles all around him, but it was clear to anyone that has burned people with pyrokinesis before that such an attack like a mini sun dropping would leave much more than a light amount of black ash. Even with the blast radius controlled, as it was this time around; the bodies of nine hundred and eighty – nine humans would most definitely leave piles upon piles of ash behind. The remnant traces of ash is only a little that originated from all of the grass, insects, soil, flora and number of trees that wound up getting caught in the cross-fire and disintegrating.

He can see shadows now, standing firm in the distance. They seem to be facing his way. He slowly walks over to the spot he remembered leaving his team at. What should he say? Naturally, first he must apologize for the heavy-handed move. Second, he needed to order everyone to hasten their preparations because they’d only be given 40 seconds to collect themselves, re-steel their resolves, and head out for Dormitory number 2. He always avoided hunting down children, all of them did. They definitely weren’t averse to killing, but when it comes to the next generation...he and his teammates could only remember their own reactions in those kids’ shoes. Looking up to their mothers and fathers, holding tightly to dreams of surpassing such strong and protective backs. Repeating that sentiment to the generations that came after him by serving as role models for elementary schoolers and middle schoolers alike. Inspiring a new generation of dreams that will guide children into replacing him one day – after he does so, his father. Such next generation of dreamers were kids not unlike his very own little sister, Miranda.

He pulls out a locket around his neck and opens it: revealing an adorable dark-skinned girl about 8 years old. He promised that so long as this locket was with him, every mission he and his team went on would include her in spirit. She filled them all with confidence; and not just her. Coalition members number twenty – four and twenty – five, Nickol and Delissa, their siblings were the same. Their newborn daughter was the same.

All there was left to remember any of them by, were these pictures.

Pictures, happy memories...and whatever little remains of their bodies were salvaged from the destroyed remnants of Augeburn.

…

Lost in thought, the young adult continues to stare distractedly at his picture - filled locket; a valuable heirloom of his mothers that remains as his only physical method left in this world, to help with remembering Miranda’s beautiful smile.

He was so distracted, that he didn’t notice the blade aiming for his eyeball.

Luckily, he reacted to the faint shadow cast over his sister’s locket. If not for that…

His head raised fast and high, as his eyes scanned the dirt-settling view before him. Countless glowing eyed ‘humans’ had closed in on, and surrounded him! He wasn’t only capable of long-distance kinesis or powerful magical light, though. In the very instance it took Dawan to jump back, one of his powerful leg’s muscles tightened. Once its muscles finished preparatory tensing that leg’s corresponding foot managed to kick off into a speedy dash, forming a tiny crater in the ground below it!

He closed in on one individual with whitened eyes, and dodged their forward stab! His left hand grabbed their wrist and pulled towards his body with super - strengthened force while tightening its grip, threatening to crush it! A crack was heard, followed by the knife falling to the floor below. Rather than grabbing it immediately, he ignored it and near - instantly used his left hand to deliver a powerful chop at their neck. This person crumbled after a second cracking sound succeeded the first.

Without pause, he rushed over to another, much larger foe with a burly build. A few speedy jabs at the gut didn’t faze the guy, but it mattered not. It was just his brutish method of testing out the durability levels of his enemy’s body. After the man moved his right arm, clearly planning on delivering a side swipe with his knife; Dawan tightened his own left fist and dashed forward, closing was little distance remained in between their bodies.

His left arm swung back a little, and with speedy momentum, delivered a powerful uppercut punch into the center point of the behemoth’s jaw! A shock wave echoed from his cranium, before he collapsed to the floor. A right kick behind his body put a halt to the surprise strike of another, who’d been planning to thrust his blade down with a stab at Dawan’s shoulder. Again, he dashed and this time, delivered a series of rapid strikes in the form of punches and kicks to four people: the surprise attacker, a woman next to him, and two hidden behind both of them. He finished each off with a punch at their adam’s apple.

The speed of a super soldier isn’t to be underestimated. Unless your speed is derived from a higher source, the most absolute common method of ‘super-speed’ was through sheer muscle power. Either that, or the second most common performed via a powerful ritual: a permanent magic enchantment to grant speed to the user. Some magicians could also cast temporary enchantments of speed on either themselves or others, but such things didn’t qualify to counting themselves as ‘speedsters’. Regardless of how common or uncommon their powers were, not many speedsters exist in the world today. Within this year alone, the number of speed-enhanced superheroes and villains reduces massively from two hundred million known individuals, to at least twenty – nine million. That’s almost one hundred and seventy – one million killed throughout the year alone! But even with that number of deaths, countless will still choose to increase their speed as much as possible.

Why?

Because higher speed is incredibly useful. Both incredibly useful, and of course, incredibly dangerous. Hence, the reason so many targeted assassinations, targeted hunts or group massacres wind up involving speedsters. Their target number one: especially when a nation showcases one with powerful potential.

But not everyone falls to the ‘speedster culling’. At least, Dawan didn’t. His strikes grew stronger and his feet moved faster than ever before. Puppet after puppet after puppet fell in calculated fashion – especially after he began coating his fists in solar energy, granting him sun-coated fists. In case it wasn’t obvious, he isn’t affected by his own magic or psychic techniques. His resistance to heat also matches the level of heat he can produce at his max. A few minutes of fighting ensued until finally, only one out of one thousand remained.

That’s when its mouth curved into a smile.

Puppet?: “You showed me an interesting sight, but that’s all the more reason I have to capture you. I cannot allow such a dangerous threat to come close to my students.”

Dawan: “Students…?”

His final thoughts, were focused on connecting the dots, to uncover just who was in charge of these non – combatant ‘students’. As he did so, his entire body was engulfed in a bright, white light.

---