Blessing Johnson stepped forward next. Her brown skin gleamed under the sun, intricate braids swaying as she found her mark. Without ceremony, she coiled and launched herself upward. Her form was clean, her ascent powerful. She cleared the bar with room to spare, landing with a soft exhale.

  7.6 meters.

  From the sidelines, Sylvie cheered, punching the air. “Yeah! Let’s show those boys that we’re strong too!”

  Chloe was already moving forward. Her brown hair was pulled back in a practical ponytail, her frame compact and exceptionally fit. She didn’t look at Vance. She looked at the bar, her expression sharp.

  “You men have always been stronger than us,” she said, her voice carrying across the quiet field. “But after the Third Catastrophe, the playing field isn’t even. It’s just different.”

  She crouched, her muscles tensing like springs, and exploded upward.

  Her jump was pure, focused propulsion. She shot past Vance’s nine-meter mark, past the ghost of his ego, and peaked just shy of ten meters.

  9.8 meters.

  She landed lightly, her face breaking into a triumphant grin. “Yeah!” she yelled, a burst of unrestrained joy.

  Vance’s smug smirk vanished. His mouth hung slightly open.

  The girls of R2 surged forward, surrounding Chloe with laughter and congratulatory shouts. “You did it, Chloe!” Sylvie beamed. “You wiped the floor with him!”

  Frederick, the tall boy with shock-white hair, slung an arm over Vance’s stiff shoulders, his tone teasing. “She beat you, Vance. By almost a full meter.”

  Vance’s biceps bulged. The air around his shoulders shimmered, then ignited. Tiny, furious flames licked at the sleeves of his uniform. Frederick yelped and jerked back, patting at a singed spot on his own shirt.

  “Hey! You wanna burn me? That hurt!”

  Vance didn’t answer. He just stared at Chloe, the flames on his skin slowly dying as his face cooled into a mask of simmering resentment.

  Theo watched from the edge of the group, a hollow feeling in his chest. Wow, he thought, with no bitterness, only awe. She’s amazing.

  ---

  One by one, the rest of R2 completed their baseline jumps. No one else broke nine meters, but no one—aside from Theo—fell below five. The physical hierarchy was now clear: Chloe and Vance at the top, a cluster of strong contenders in the seven-meter range, and Silas and Theo bringing up the rear.

  Instructor Stan observed it all, his notepad untouched. He didn’t need to write anything down.

  “Enough,” he announced, silencing the post-jump chatter. “Round one is complete. Now you will do it again. With your Signatures.”

  A low hum of excitement rippled through the class. The high-jump bar was mechanically raised, the whir of the motors loud in the sudden quiet. It stopped at twelve meters—a dizzying height, over forty feet in the air.

  Vance cracked his neck, a fresh, predatory grin on his face. “Now we’re talking.”

  Stan’s eyes swept the group and landed, unerringly, on the one student who had no business being in this lineup.

  “Theodore,” he said. “You’re first.”

  A murmur of surprise and curiosity spread through the class. Starting with the weakest? It felt like a public dissection.

  Theo’s stomach turned to ice. He walked forward, acutely aware of every stare on his back. They all think I’m a mistake. Maybe I am. I just got lucky to have this power.

  Instructor Stan watched him, his own thoughts shielded behind an impassive face. Now, he projected silently, like a challenge. Show me what you can do. Show me what you’re hiding.

  Theo stopped at the launch point, his eyes tracking up the towering bar. The math scrolled through his mind, a cold, logical counterpoint to his fear.

  One Bout definitely won’t be enough. One Bout is two peak humans. Factoring my mass, 9.8 m/s2 gravity, and required impulse for twelve meters… I would need…

  The calculation crystallized.

  Five Bouts.

  He swallowed, his throat dry. It was more than he’d ever consciously summoned at once. The strain during the run had brought him to 96%. This would burn.

  He took a steadying breath, lowered his center of gravity, and spoke the command into the quiet.

  “Turbo. 3 Bouts.”

  The air around him didn’t shimmer. It didn’t glow. But for a fraction of a second, the space at his feet seemed to compact, as if reality itself flinched.

  He pushed off.

  His jump was better than the first—stronger, faster. But it wasn’t superhuman. It was the leap of a very powerful, very enhanced human. He soared, strained, and peaked well below the target.

  6 meters.

  He landed with a jarring impact that shot pain through his ankles and knees. He stumbled, catching himself on one hand. “Damn,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “It hurts.”

  The silence from his classmates was no longer curious. It was puzzled, almost embarrassed for him.

  Instructor Stan did not look puzzled. He looked… disappointed. The sharp, analytical hope in his gaze dimmed, replaced by the flat finality of a revised hypothesis. The anomaly was not revealing a hidden depth. It was confirming a deficiency.

  Without another word, without critique or commentary, he moved on.

  “Next.”

  Vance Kruger was up first. He scoffed at the run-up. Instead, he planted his feet, crouched, and detonated a plasma burst from his soles. He rocketed upward, clearing the bar with room to spare before landing in a crouch, the pit smoking slightly. Measurement: 37.2 meters. He shot a cocky look at the class.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Theo stood near the high jump pit, watching the others. He flinched when Lily Cinclare materialized beside him, silent as a ghost. Her pale eyes were fixed on him, unblinking.

  “Theodore Griffin,” she said, her voice flat, devoid of greeting.

  “Lily,” he nodded, unnerved.

  “I never expected to see you here,” she stated. It wasn’t an accusation, just a fact filed away. “We will talk about that later. First, I want you to punch me.”

  Theo blinked. “What?”

  “You know how my power works,” she said, as if explaining the color of the sky. “Punch me. In the stomach. As hard as you can.”

  Theo stared. The class chatter, Vance’s boasting, the hum of the field—it all faded. She was utterly serious. “I’m not going to punch you.”

  “It is a tactical request,” she replied, tilting her head slightly. “I require kinetic potential. Your strike has it. My power will harvest it. It is efficient.”

  Theo’s mind raced. Harvest it? He remembered her explaining her power—she could seize the denied consequence. She wasn’t asking for a test of strength; she was asking him to charge her battery.

  He hesitated. Using Turbo in the punch was out of the question. But a normal, full-strength punch from him, after months of Stupendous’s training, could still hurt someone badly. What if her power faltered?

  “What if you’re not ready?” he asked quietly.

  “Then I get hurt,” she said, no more concerned than if discussing the weather. “That is the experiment. But I'm ready. Punch me.”

  Her calm was absolute. It wasn’t a dare; it was a clinical procedure.

  Theo sighed, steeling himself. He wasn’t going to argue with a force of nature. He set his feet, pulled his right fist back, and aimed for her solar plexus. He pulled the punch slightly—a reflex he couldn’t suppress.

  “Harder,” she commanded, her eyes narrowing in focus. “This isn't enough.”

  Gritting his teeth, Theo drove his fist forward in a sharp, powerful jab.

  It connected.

  And nothing happened.

  There was no sound of impact. No shudder through her body. His fist stopped dead against her uniform, all force, all kinetic energy, vanishing the instant it touched her. It felt like punching a universe contained in cloth.

  Lily’s eyes flared with a sudden, faint silver light. She didn’t move, but Theo felt a strange, static pull in the air around his fist.

  “Denied,” she whispered.

  Then she moved. She turned from him, took three quick steps toward the high jump pit, and leaped.

  It wasn’t a jump. It was a release.

  The energy Theo had put into the punch—the force that had been severed, denied its purpose—exploded from the soles of her feet. She didn’t arc; she projectiled upward in a perfectly vertical line, clearing the 12-meter bar until she reach 26-meters. At the apex, she seemed to hang for a moment, the stolen energy spent, before descending as lightly as a feather, her landing silent and perfect.

  She straightened, looked back at Theo, and gave a single, slight nod.

  “Measurement: 26 meters,” the automated scorer announced.

  Theo stood, fist still slightly clenched, staring. She had used his own strength as a ladder. It was terrifying, brilliant, and deeply intimate in a way he couldn’t explain.

  Lily walked back to him, her calm restored. “Thank you,” she said.

  Theo's mind raced, the gears of his newly-honed tactical instinct grinding into motion.

  Wait. Wait. That shouldn't be nearly enough.

  He’d pulled the punch. He knew he had. Even a full-strength punch from him—a kinetic enhancer, as far as anyone knew—couldn't generate that much vertical thrust. The physics were all wrong. The energy required to launch a person twenty-six meters straight up was monumental. It would have taken a sledgehammer swung by a giant, not a teenage boy’s jab.

  His eyes narrowed, watching Lily’s retreating, placid back.

  She must have stored the denied consequence from something else. Something bigger. Before class.

  The realization clicked into place with cold clarity. Her power, Final Denial, wasn't just a shield. It was a capacitor. Every attack that failed to hurt her—every stray shove in the crowded hallway, every testing probe from an instructor, maybe even a deliberate, heavy strike she’d arranged—was a deposit into a silent, invisible bank of negated violence. She wasn’t just using the energy from his punch. She was using his punch as the trigger, the spark to release a far greater, pre-accumulated potential.

  Lily Cinclare. Signature: Final Denial.

  Her power enforced a single, absolute law: harm is not allowed to finish. Attacks could begin. They could travel. They could even make contact. But the final, causal step—where force translates to injury, heat to burn, blade to breakage—was surgically severed. Punches landed without bruising. Fire touched without burning. Bullets stopped and dropped at her skin.

  And with intense, withering focus, she could do two things: momentarily seize that severed consequence and bind it to her own counter-strike, or impose the same denial upon a touched ally or object for a fleeting few seconds.

  The greater the intended harm, the more effort it took to deny. A love-tap cost nothing. A killing blow could fracture her mind. But the energy denied… that energy had to go somewhere. Lily had just shown him where.

  We will talk later, she had said.

  Theo had no doubt they would. And he suddenly understood that the quiet girl with the empty eyes might be the most dangerous person on this field.

  To Be Continued...