Sorry, that’s a secret.

-Savvria Ixen Âkil, President of the ISPC

Luke’s feet bounced on the establishment’s bright wooden floor. Between the repetitive movement of his leg and the additional fidgeting of his fingers, he was able to reduce the uncomfortable sensation coursing through his body to a manageable level. A sensation whose reason he couldn’t understand.

(Since when meeting with someone was this… Nerve racking?) He thought, raising his head afterwards to look at the people near him.

There weren't that many people when he entered the restaurant, but it was now packing quite the number. Families, couples, and friends were chatting whilst they had their meals despite the gray and gloomy day, knives and forks also tingling around the building.

The moment of meditation was met by a rush of energy.

His pool of power was beginning to spill its content, which made Luke realize he had stopped both gestures. But what took him even more by surprise was that he had charged it to its maximum capability.

It hadn’t been long since he had gotten his ‘powers’, probably three or four months tops. And until a week ago, he hadn’t even discovered more than half of the things he now knew. Nonetheless, he had a pretty good grasp of how much power he could store, as if it was a muscle he had had his whole life.

The power he could gather wasn’t something as big as the strength those atlas in the upper levels showed, but it was a lot. And with the movements he had been doing, it would have taken some time to fill it up.

(Damn,) he voiced mentally, more out of aw than anything else.

It continued to drain, slowly but steadily, more and more energy left his body, making room for more of the uncomfortable sensation that tempered with it. Luke didn’t like that one bit, and soon after stopping, he began once more, switching the fidgeting of his fingers for little slaps on the wooden table he was sitting next to.

Gathering power wasn’t the same as maintaining its level. The weakest of movements could stop its decrease, regardless of the amount contained already.

Luke kept looking around, his eyes passing through different tables and people, both from the inside and outside of the restaurant. Yet they stopped at the sight of something.

A baby, dressed in a yellow onesie, was grabbing their tiny little feet with a smile on their face. The adorable creature eyed his foot with surprise on his face, as if he hadn’t expected to find that there.

Warmth filled Luke as he glimpsed into a sliver of hope, a fragment of determination.

(I have to be there from the beginning.)

Yet time wasn’t being as kind as it could.

Luke stood from his seat with sudden anxiety. He looked at the restaurant’s door, but the person he was waiting for wasn’t to be seen. He then faced his meal after sitting down, hoping that it would distract him.

It was a medium pizza with little pieces of ham dispersed on top of the hot cheese. It looked, and tasted delicious, yet he had only eaten two slices. He could easily gut the entire pizza without a problem, but it was also supposed to feed the other person.

The ill feeling across his body also made it difficult to keep eating.

(Ah, what a waste…)

“What did you want?”

Luke raised his head and saw Ludwig at the other end of the squared table. He was already taking a seat in front of him by the time Luke recognized him. Then, the ill feeling inside him turned into a cold stream also flowing into his feet, hands and eyes.

“Uhh..! You… When did you arrive?” Luke asked Ludwig.

“Just now,” he answered, without any emotion to be found in his voice.

“Uhh… Do you want some?” Luke said, pointing at the pizza. “I can order something else if you-”

“What did you want?” Ludwig repeated, in the same tone he had spoken before. In the only tone, in fact, he spoke to him. A tone that could make a garden statue have the softest of expressions in comparison, a tone that could even rival cold itself with how little warmth it had.

“I… Uh…” Luke tried to say, and continued trying for a bit more. Throughout the awkward silence, Ludwig’s face didn’t budge one bit. A menacing and stoic figure that kept eyeing him with sharp green eyes.

“I wanted to talk,” Luke then finally managed to say.

“About what?”

“Ehh… My training…?”

“Why did you ask me to come here, then? Couldn’t we have spoken about it where we usually meet? In fact, I think it is far safer and more convenient to do it there, than here,” Ludwig said, almost in a robotic manner.

“I… Just wanted to talk about what was next.”

“I repeat, why here?”

“Ehh… I just… When you want to talk with someone you invite them to a place like this, don’t you? Would you have preferred another place? Like a park or-”

“The storage room,” Ludwig coldly cut him. “Like I’ve said before, our matters shouldn’t be exposed lightly to other people. I hope you can add one and one to know why.”

“Yeah… Okay. I’ll keep that in mind.”

That last part was obviously meant to hurt, but the absence of poison made it somehow worse. The fact that Ludwig didn’t care about Luke, made it worse.

Why would you save someone, put your life at stake, when you didn’t care about the person that was being threatened? Ludwig had been spying on the alley where the girl, and later, Luke, were in danger. If he truly, truly, didn’t care about them, he wouldn’t have done so, he most likely would have walked past them.

But he didn’t. Then why?

“Now that we’re already here, let’s get it out of the way. What about the training?”

“Umm,” Luke said as he tried to compose himself. “Yeah, um… I think I’ve probably gotten the gist of my power, so I was thinking maybe we could, I don’t know, do something more advanced?”

“If I recall correctly, the prior week you didn’t even know that you could use other things apart from your arms with your power. So I really doubt that.”

“I’ve been training ten hours a day for the past week. I hadn’t done anything like that before-”

“Correct, you’ve been training for a week and you knew nothing before. Of course it is going to feel like a lot of progress. Yet in reality, it isn’t as much as you think.”

“Hear me for a sec. Getting into more advanced stuff now will mean more weapons to use against-”

Ludwig only had to look at his eyes to make him remember where they were.

“I mean, getting into more advanced stuff will be very useful,” Luke corrected.

“Yes, that is true,” Ludwig conceded.

“Then shouldn’t we do-”

“But,” Ludwig interrupted him. “A lack of fundamentals would be a bigger loss. I prefer to have someone not with a lot of capabilities, but ones that I can count on. I don’t need more weapons, I need ones that work.”

The spark of hope vanished as the thought settled with Luke.

(This isn’t going well. I have to change something.)

Ludwig might have treated him in a cold manner, but he was listening to him. He had even admitted that Luke had a point. There was a way. What could he use in his favor? What weakness did Ludwig have that he could exploit? What did he know that Ludwig lacked?

Whilst revisiting the past week, something stuck out.

He didn’t know much about Armstrong. With how focused and obsessed he was with her, it made sense that he would be into all sorts of stuff regarding her, yet that wasn’t the case. He lacked common knowledge about a lot of the heroes, not that he was thinking about it. Questions about Armstrong in the midst of their training session weren’t rare, also providing the only source of conversation between Luke and Ludwig when it didn’t regard the formation of the former. Maybe reading some of the wikis might have been more useful than what he had originally thought.

Luke took a deep breath.

“Look. I don’t know why, but it seems like you’re treating this a bit lightly.”

“Lightly?” Ludwig repeated, the ice beginning to melt.

“We are going against something big,” Luke continued. “Someone big, someone experienced and dangerous. I don’t think I need to remind you what she has done, or who she has fought. Basic things aren’t going to cut it. Solid foundations aren’t going to be enough. Experts have failed, and both of us know that we aren’t even near their level.”

Ludwig lowered his brown, sharpening his face. Yet he remained silent, still willing to hear his reasons. Points which foundation lied in the lack of his knowledge. There were multiple ways of dealing with an atlas, and most were surprisingly simple. Of course, that didn’t mean they were easy, but it didn’t require the most elaborate of plans.

But simple things wouldn’t get Luke the renown he needed.

“We need something unexpected, something that no one has tried against her before. Something heavy and efficient. Unique. Potent.” At this point he was just repeating himself, the only reason he was adding more adjectives being that he hoped it made it sound more convincing.

There was a moment of silence, or what could be called silence in a packed restaurant. Luke felt an incredible amount of tension being released as Ludwig’s sharpness dulled away from his face.

“Fine,” he said, with an emotion that screeched amongst the coldness. Exhaustion.

(Wait… Did it work? No way did it just fucking work-)

“What do you have in mind?”

And with that question, the momentum Luke had gathered disappeared. “I… Ah…” He had to think of something. It was at his hand’s reach! “Well, I had hoped that you had an idea of what to do next. I just… Want to do something more like how I told you…”

An awkward silence butted into the conversation.

“Let’s see if I got this right,” Ludwig finally said, his face a statue with daggers for eyes. “After I helped you with your mistake, for which you almost died, you followed me home and fought me until I accepted ‘teaching you’, as you had asked out of nowhere. Despite that I accepted, I then began ‘training’ you, the results of which you can see after only spending a week at it. And after all that, you tell me to think of something else, as if I hadn’t done enough? As if I owed you more?”

Luke hadn’t really experienced being intimidated before, yet he now felt like a child being talked down to by one of his parents, or at least how he imagined it would be. He expected an outburst of rage to come out of Ludwig next, but he was wrong. It was much worse.

Ludwig laughed. Not loudly, not for a long time. He laughed as if a dumb thought had crossed his mind.

“Unbelievable,” he then said. “I’m done… No, almost done. You could still be useful,” Ludwig pointed out after a moment’s worth of consideration. “I’ll give you a week. Find something that can make me think you’re even more useful than what you are right now. I’ll be by the storage room everyday from seven to seven and a half p.m. If you haven’t shown me anything of interest by the time the week has ended, I don’t want to see your face ever again. And if I do, I’ll kill you.”

With that said, Ludwig stood up.

“Wait, hold on-!” Luke said as he reached towards Ludwig.

The glass crashed against the ground and Luke’s hand felt a stinging sensation as they were both swayed by Ludwig’s backhand.

“Don’t you dare fucking touch me,” the blizzard inside Ludwig let out. And without further words, he left the restaurant, his ultimatum having been said.

Luke tightened his fist as he saw him leave, yet he remained still for a moment.

“Sorry about that,” he then said to the couple sitting at the table next to them. “Please, forgive him. He’s just having a rough week.”

He then grabbed a handkerchief from his table and began sweeping the glass away from their feet until a staff member that must have heard it breaking came with a broom.

Luke backed away, and instead of sitting at his table and trying to forget what had just happened with a perfectly edible pizza, he also left the restaurant after handing the staff member the money for the meal and the glass.

(How dumb are you? You couldn't even think of something when you already had it?! And you want to be better than him? Come on, Luke, get it together! Your child needs you!)

—-----

Reveca had almost finished drying her shoes by the time the staff member from the restaurant had cleaned all the chunks of glass, but ultimately, she gave up. The glass of water had gotten her socks wet, and she wasn’t about to go barefoot in public.

After putting the napkin on the table, she eyed Bryan. The glass had also gotten some of his clothes as well, yet he seemed to not care about it as he looked through the windows at the outside of the restaurant.

There was worry on his face.

“Bryan?” Reveca asked.

“Mmh?” He then responded as he turned around, his eyebrows raised in a doubtful manner.

“Is everything ok?”

“I… It’s just… Nah, don’t worry about it. Everything’s fine.” And without a proper answer, Bryan began gutting his lasagna.

Reveca twirled her pasta with a fork. She had still to try it, but hunger didn’t come easily when she was as confused as she was.

(How did I get here?)

How had they gotten to an Italian restaurant when Friction… Bryan had had both of his wrists broken just an hour ago? And nonetheless, by her. Everything was… Which part of any of this had to do with food?

Reveca tried to follow the events as she revised them in her head, but she still wasn’t capable of finding sense in the order they had developed. Nor why they had developed the way that they have done.

She kept fiddling with her pasta until Bryan spoke. “That reminds me,” he said with his mouth partially filled with food. “I still owe you an explanation,” he then finished as he swallowed the bite.

Reveca would have liked to have forgotten about that, but it was difficult with how much she had revisited the past occurrences in the current day. They needed a reason to happen, afterall. She stopped the fork’s movement, instead putting it on the table as she looked at Bryan.

He hadn’t looked much like a Bryan with his mask on.

“The reason why Laura can be so tough is-”

Her heart began racing, pumping blood like snow pikes poured rivers into the earth. The grip she had on the table tightened, but, thankfully, the piece of furniture wasn’t made out of glass, enough had been swept from the ground today. With trembling eyes, she heard, expecting the reason she had been dreading for what felt like years.

“-Because that’s how she was taught.”

From all the feelings Reveca had been anticipating, underwhelming hadn't been one of them. In fact, it was so unexpected that she once again became confused.

“Excuse me, what?” She asked Bryan.

“You know Dimension Pocket? The hero, I mean?” He inquired as he grabbed his glass of water and took a sip.

“Yeah. Hard not to know in this city.”

“I figured that much. I suppose you know he was in the army.”

Reveca nodded. Dimension Pocket was a hero who… Didn’t really care for a private life.

“Now,” he continued. “I don’t know if you know this but Dimension Pocket went to the military for a couple of years. Didn’t really like the upper ranks. He was also the mentor of Gravity, and it’s not like he lacked any discipline. And with that, I believe the rest is… Well, obvious.”

Despite the additional explanation, Reveca still found it underwhelming. Dumb, even. She now felt stupid because of all the time she had spent worrying about it. The reason made sense, and that was why her first conclusions felt dumb, delusional, and at the same time, naive, blinded to the more obvious answer.

A hero would be risking their life like a soldier might, something that she had completely glossed over. In other words, she hadn’t considered that becoming a professional hero might be difficult.

“Are you sure that’s it?” She asked. “How do you know that’s it?”

“Simple,” Bryan said. “I just asked her one day.”

“You… Asked her? You asked Laura?”

“Yeah. I mean, in my case it felt weird since, well, since she was my partner, but rather than acting as such, it felt more like a really, really, really strict sister. So… I asked her.”

With that said, Reveca felt ashamed.

It hurt. She now saw it, and that made it hurt. Evidence that a truth had been spoken the day when her mentor had humiliated her.

“You okay?” Bryan asked. “You looked disappointed.”

“I… Yeah.” There was no reason to lie.

Bryan laughed, “Look at it on the bright side, this probably was the best outcome. You no longer have to worry.”

That was… True. There was something less to beat her mind with. Of course, she had gotten something arguably worse in return. At least for her self confidence.

However, putting self-deprecating thoughts to the side, there was still something unanswered.

“Why are you telling me this? Like, all this? Why are you so friendly with me? Isn’t there supposed to be some kind of separation between the good guys and trainees? Yet you told me your name, revealed your face and… Brought me to an Italian restaurant. Why?”

“The last one is easy. I had been wanting to come with someone for the longest time. About the other ones…” For the first time since the food had come, Bryan put the fork down next to his lasagna. “About the first and second… I did it because of the bet we made, but I’m guessing you're asking about why I made such a promise.”

He scratched the back of his head and sank into his chair.

“Being a hero is hard,” Bryan finally began. “There’s some people that, simply, aren’t made to be heroes. Even among the ones that do pass the test to become a Neighbor, time will get them to renounce, that being sooner for some, and later for others. Seeing people leave due to the pressure, the danger, the stress, the feeling of sadness that some get, is not unusual in this job, and that’s coming from a guy with barely any experience in it. This goes for Neighbors, new heroes, and old heroes alike, and you just have to get used to that.“

“Then why wasn’t that my case?” Reveca asked.

“There’s…” Bryan hesitated for the second time, unknowing if it was ok for him to tell her. “There’s something bad that’s coming. Something we thought we had dealt with, and we need help. Strong help.”

Reveca blinked. Even if she didn’t know about the ominous threat, she could sense the severity of it by how Bryan was talking about it, and she knew she wasn’t that strong. She knew she had potential but…

(No…) She thought, then continued aloud, “I… You think I’m…? You must be confused. You-”

“You basically rendered me useless in less than five seconds. And if you let me be honest for a second, I don’t understand why you’re undermining you. I might not be the best against kinetics, but I usually don’t get bodied that hard that quickly. And if you still aren’t convinced, Reveca, if you survive the year, and the executives don’t fuck you over too bad, you’ll be in A rank.”

(I definitely didn’t expect this,) she thought to herself. (A rank? That’s… That’s better than… Oh God.)

Reveca had never imagined that excitement and dread could ever combine so flawlessly inside her. There weren't really any words that could express what she felt right now, or at least that could express the intensity of them. Making everything else feel hollow in comparison. Dull. Empty.

She was flabbergasted.

Reveca stared at her dish, and with a blank expression and filling thoughts, she gripped the fork and had her first bite.

“Oh, wow! That’s really good.”