Flashback - Tess Hansen - 12y old

"Some kids broke it, again. It's happening like every two years at this point," the boy in front of me says. He is slim, yet his body is athletic. He is around 2 years older than me and he is showing me his right arm in a cast, "The weird thing is that it's the right one, not the left one again."

The fun part is that while saying this, he is smiling, not bothered at all by the broken arm that is now in a cast.

He looks at me and for a moment, he smiles. His smile is so cheeky, so cheerful, all while he looks as if he is doing something he shouldn't. After smiling, he quickly looks around, making sure no one saw it.

The boy moves a bit closer, a small smile still on his face while his two differently colored eyes shine brightly.

They are pretty.

"I'll tell you a secret if you want," he says.

It almost makes me want to sigh; I've already gotten used to boys coming up with all kinds of stories to try to impress me. Mom keeps saying that I'm pretty, but I don't agree with her. I'm too tall to be pretty.

Still, I force myself to smile and nod.

"Wow, that was a gloriously fake smile," the boy immediately sees through me, "Hehe, you should see your expression now," he continues.

What's he talking about? I'm sure I'm controlling my face properly.

"Your brow furrowed a bit, and your left eyebrow twitched slightly. Then your smile froze on your face and you tried to keep it there," his eyes continue to examine me, like I'm some kind of interesting animal.

"As if you could do it better," I say. How annoying. It makes me want to punch him.

"Probably not."

Huh? Why is he then being so cheeky? Is he just teasing me?

"Asshole," I say, and instead of getting angry, he just nods.

"This is better," he says, "You really meant it this time." His smile is gone, but his eyes shine cheekily.

"So what are you doing here? Did you sit next to me just to annoy me?" I ask.

"Partially, but mostly I wanted to take a look at the police station," he lifts his hand and points his finger at the police station nearby, "Did you know it takes on average 10 to 20 minutes to leave the station after they get the call?" As he talks, any semblance of a smile disappears from his face, and it becomes an emotionless mask.

He continues, "Of course, it's quicker to some places as the cars usually move around there and it can go down to 5 to 10 minutes. But for poorer city parts, it's 10-20 minutes. Often longer for smaller crimes," he turns to me, emotions gone even from his eyes, and he tries to smile.

The smile is terrible.

"That's a big-ass fake smile," I blurt out, and for some reason, I start feeling uneasy.

"I know, right? I'm terrible at this. Sometimes it's easy to smile and sometimes I think I might forget how to do it if I'm not careful. It's getting harder and harder, you know."

I decide to ignore it. I don't know what to say to that. Instead, I ask, "So why do you watch the police station?"

He pauses and I can see him thinking. A small strand of hair falls onto his face, and he flings it away annoyed, and then he turns back to me.

"I'm Nathaniel," he says and reaches his hand towards me, and that makes me smile. What boy shakes hands with a girl?

When I reach out mine to shake with him, he pulls it away and pretends that he wasn't about to shake my hand but to touch his hair.

That's so childish! I bet he did it because he saw me smiling at his gesture.

"That's so petty!" I say.

He doesn't react to that and just continues to look at me with his pretty eyes.

"I'm Tess," I give up. This boy is crazy. Actually, all boys are crazy. Mom says it's because of puberty, but I think that's just an excuse. This one might be crazier than the others.

But it's fun; he's not boring. I like how he behaves. Should I try to mirror it a bit? It seems cool.

"So why are you watching the police station and learning how quickly they can get somewhere?" I ask, this time really curious.

"Well, Tess. You could say that I'm getting ready. You know, just in case," he says, and I immediately know he's serious. There isn't even a speck of hesitation as he says so.

I'm not a good person, quite far from it. That's how I see myself. It's not something that bothers me; it's just something I know about myself.

So maybe part of my mind doesn't mind all this bullshit thrown at me, all the pain I go through because it feels as if I deserve it?

A small, dumb-as-heck part of me.

I'm me. I'm Nathaniel Gwyn, and all of the decisions were made by me, so I will bear their consequences.

Wolves, goblins, normal animals. All of them, well over level 100, and some of them with two question marks, continue to rush at me no matter how much I reposition and how far I get.

And the giant Cinderbear is gone, completely disappeared out of my detection range. It makes me uneasy.

I duck under the bite, and the dagger flashes, barely infused with mana that I resonate with, and I leave the wolf to bleed out while dashing away from a few more attacks.

I refuse to use full armor; there is only a gauntlet on my left forearm that I use to block the attacks I can't dodge. Otherwise, I continue to strengthen my body while trying to be as efficient as possible.

Another stab goes through a goblin warrior's eye, I block two arrows with the piece of armor on my left forearm and deflect the third one with the dagger. I then, for a split second, infuse it with more mana and elongate it to cut off another wolf's head.

All the monsters are extremely aggressive and continue to rush at me in a mindless rage.

I narrow a small amount of kinetic energy into three cones as thin as possible, and it pierces through the heads of three more goblins. I let the wolf bite my armored, left forearm and then pierce his temple with the dagger in my hand.

Another slash and I leave another wolf to bleed out.

I siphon a bit of thermal energy from a fire attack of a three-headed wolf and change it to strengthen my body. Immediately, I realize that it's less mana-efficient than using energy generated by my kinetic mana heart, and while jumping over the wolf, I throw the dagger at him, boosting it with a bit of kinetic energy and it burrows into one of its heads.

I don't even create a dagger made of mana and just coat my hand in [Resonance] to cut off the remaining two heads and grab the dagger that I threw.

Then I run for a few seconds, ducking attacks flying at me and dodging behind trees that continue to explode or get trashed by monsters rushing at me.

I form two orbs made of mana and boost them at the monsters.

Again, I realize that it's not efficient enough.

So I [Focus] more and reduce the amount of mana my heart is getting through the Mana Regulator. Immediately, I feel that I have much less kinetic energy to transfer with symbiotic transference, but I ignore it.

When another wolf dashes at me, I wait until the last moment and only boost my body for a split second to cut through its neck and then stop. Once again, I feel weaker, but I continue to observe everything to take it all in.

I sense another goblin dash at me from behind trying to stab me. Again, I send mana through my body only for a second, long enough to twist my body and stab the bottom of its chin, making the dagger pierce out on top of his head. Then I stop the mana and save it again.

Another pulse, just enough to deflect two arrows and a javelin. Then two more to reposition myself. Another one to stab the wolf. Three more to reposition and dodge.

I continue to trickle tiny bits of mana through my body, and now, even with the effect of the poison, I feel my reserves growing instead of decreasing.

Good. Something tells me I will need them.

Ten minutes before the end of the quest, the suns reappear, and immediately the monsters fall quiet. The silence fills the entire forest, only the sounds of burning wood and falling trees echo in the deafening quiet.

All the monsters freeze; they aren't moving at all. Not even if I get to one of the goblins and stab him; the monster just falls down dead, not reacting at all.

Soon after, their eyes start glowing. The left eye of every single monster starts glowing in a bright orange color, like a spark.

My eye as well.

Without hesitation, I boost my [Resonance] with [Mana Surge] and tear apart the foreign mana in my left eye. The pain hits me, but the mana is gone.

My heart is beating wildly, and I know how close to death I was.

My suspicion is confirmed, and the orange-glowing left eye of the wolf near me starts burning and expands into a massive flame that turns the monster into ash. From that flame, the giant Cinderbear steps out, its head immediately burning a vast area around.

As if on cue, the sky gets covered in clouds, the suns barely visible behind them, and then the rain starts falling. Beautiful droplets of water infused with blue, green, and pink mana fall down with impossible speed and start tearing apart the bodies of the weaker monsters, piercing them like thousands of tiny bullets.

Left with no other option, my dormant mana stirs. The mana I've conserved for the past twenty minutes is now almost replenished.

It begins to rise, much like a wild animal waking up from a deep slumber.

My heart beats, and my mana flows through my body, quickly filling it with the power I've gotten used to.

My mana. My skills.

They surge from my body, and this time I do not run. I do not reposition, I do not dodge. This time I will go to my limits and if it won't be enough, I will go beyond them.