Edgar Rodigar used a series of sharp, repulsive Pulses from his hands against the ground, pole-vaulting himself over with rigid control. Measurement: 24.8 meters.
The Star: Dykes Tucker didn’t even jump. He just appeared in the air above the bar, having run up the side of the poll. Measurement: 33.7 meters. He landed with a smirk.
The Struggle: Felix Chen had no physical boost. He failed the 5.45-meter mark, barely clearing with a pained grunt. Simon Graves shed some necrotic mass to lighten himself, but it was agonizing and he barely made 8 meters, his face pale with pain.
---
Theo approached the long jump runway, his body humming with contained energy. The sand pit stretched out, a 50-meter expanse of pale grit. He rolled his shoulders, feeling the ache from the high jump still lingering in his joints.
Okay, he reasoned, his mind clicking into a cold, tactical space. This is different. It's all horizontal. No dangerous height to fall from. I can afford to push the output higher.
He glanced at his wrist. The display glowed steadily. He focused inward, on the churning reactor in his chest. He didn't need finesse here. He needed raw, explosive power.
Go Turbo. Five Bouts.
It wasn't a request. It was a command to his own biology.
A searing wave of energy erupted through his pathways, far beyond the careful trickle he'd used before. The golden circuitry under his skin blazed to life, not as faint lines, but as blazing, molten veins of light. His muscles screamed in protest—a deep, cellular ache of overload.
Damn. My body is… tearing itself apart.
But the Refined Turbo was there, a torrent of harnessed force. He blocked out the pain. He had one job.
He launched into his run.
It wasn't a sprint. It was a detonation.
The ground cracked under his first step. Air resistance became a physical wall he shattered through. To anyone watching, he didn't accelerate—he simply transitioned from stillness to a blurring shockwave of motion.
Edgar Rodigar, who had been smirking at the runway’s edge, froze. His analytical mind short-circuited. What the hell? Theo’s a baseline, how did he do that?
Lily Cinclare’s eyes widened in shock. This wasn’t the powerless Theo she knew.
At the take-off line, Theo didn't jump. He vaulted. The world became a streaking blur of color and wind-roar.
Time stretched. He sailed.
He covered a distance that defied the very geometry of the field.
399 meters.
He landed not with a gymnast’s roll, but with a catastrophic, earth-shaking CRUNCH. Sand geysered into the air. The impact traveled up his legs like twin lightning bolts of pure, structural failure.
Pain.
White-hot and absolute. A hairline fracture spiderwebbed through his right tibia. Ligaments in his knees and ankles shrieked as they shredded. Muscle fibers tore like overstrained cables.
He lay in the crater of his own making for one endless second, vision swimming, the taste of copper in his mouth. The golden light under his skin died, leaving behind a network of angry, livid red lines.
Get up. Get up. They're watching.
Gritting his teeth against a wave of nausea, Theo pushed himself onto his hands and knees. Every movement was fire. He forced his trembling legs under him. He stood.
He swayed, but he stood. His face was pale, sweat beading on his forehead, but his gaze was steady. He looked not at the shocked faces of his classmates, but at the distant horizon, as if measuring the space he had just conquered.
The field was utterly silent, save for the faint trickle of sand settling back to earth. The display screen flickered, then updated.
GRIFFIN, T. — 399.0m
A new record. A physical impossibility. Written in pain and golden light.
The silence that followed wasn’t just quiet—it was vacuumous, as if the sound had been sucked out of the world along with everyone’s understanding of it.
Then, chaos.
A roar of disbelief, shouts, a few panicked yelps. The automated scorer kept flashing 89.0m in glaring red digits, a taunt to the laws of physics.
But Theo only saw two people.
Edgar Rodigar was no longer smirking. He was pale, his analytical composure shattered. He took a step forward, then another, his usual repulsive aura flickering unsteadily around him like a damaged force field. He stopped a few feet from the sand pit, staring at Theo as if he were a ghost—or a bomb.
“Griffin,” Edgar said, his voice low, stripped of its usual arrogant edge. It was raw, almost confused. “What was that?”
Theo tried to keep his breathing even. The pain in his legs was a white-hot throb, but the humiliation and shock in Edgar’s eyes were worse. “I jumped.”
“Don’t,” Edgar hissed, taking another step closer. The air between them grew thick with repulsive pressure. “Don’t you dare treat me like an idiot. You don’t have a Signature. You were tested. You were Baseline. I saw the reports. What. Was. That.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a demand for the universe to reorder itself.
Before Theo could form a lie, Lily pushed through the gathered students, her usual playful energy gone, replaced by a sharp, urgent intensity.
“Theo, what was that?” she asked, her voice tight. “What did you just do? That shouldn’t be possible.” Her eyes swept over him, really looking for the first time. “Come to think of it, how did you even get into this school? How did you pass the exam? Your hair… your eyes… you’re so different now, Theo. Start talking.”
Theo’s mind raced, but pain and panic made his thoughts sluggish. They had him cornered. The two people who knew his old powerlessness better than anyone were now demanding answers.
“I… it’s my Signature,” he managed, the excuse sounding pathetic even to him. “It just… developed.”
“During puberty? After years of negative scans?” Edgar’s laugh was brittle. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“You can’t develop a Signature after age five, Theo,” Lily pressed, her gaze unyielding. “You know that. Were you lying to us all this time?”
The standoff was broken by a new, authoritative presence.
Instructor Frederick Stan didn’t hurry. He walked to the edge of the sand pit, his gaze moving from the crater, to the scoring display, and finally to Theo. His expression was unreadable, but the glass of water in his hand had frozen solid.
“Griffin,” he said, his voice cutting through the tension. “You will report to the medical wing. Now.” His eyes flicked to Edgar and Lily. “The rest of you, continue. This assessment is not a spectator sport.”
As a proctor moved to help Theo—who shrugged off the hand, determined to walk on his own shattered legs—he felt their eyes on his back.
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Edgar’s, burning with betrayal and a furious need for answers.
Lily’s, cold with a relentless, analytical hunger.
---
Instructor Stan watched him go, then looked down at the tablet in his hand. He pulled up Theo’s profile.
GRIFFIN, T.
Signature: Type I – Super Strength
Tier: 1
Notes: Low-to-mid output. Control stable.
He looked back at the crater in the sand. At the number still glowing on the board.
He just displayed feats of raw speed and explosive power, Stan thought, his brow furrowing slightly. That’s beyond what he displayed during the exam. Was the entrance exam data inaccurate? He smiled. Seems you were holding back kid.
His eyes tracked Theo’s pained, limping form being led off the field.
Or perhaps he can’t handle his own power. Maybe that’s why he held back during the high jump—not from lack of ability, but from lack of control.
He filed the thought away. Anomalies were to be observed, not solved in the middle of a practical.
---
Vance Kruger’s jaw didn’t just drop—it unhinged. For a full three seconds, he just stared at the number flashing on the board: 399.0m.
Then his brain rebooted with a volcanic surge of outrage and envy.
“WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL?!” he bellowed, flames flickering uncontrollably at his clenched fists. “That’s not a jump, that’s a launch sequence! THAT LOOSER CAN DO THAT?!”
He turned on the spot, searching the faces of the other students as if they were all in on a joke at his expense. The ranking had just shifted. His presumed top spot in raw power had just been challenged by the quiet roommate he’d written off as baseline decoration.
The jealousy was molten, immediate, and laced with a grudging, furious respect.
I’m burning through my own fat and blood just to throw a fireball, he thought, his teeth gritted so hard his jaw ached. And he just… leapt. No fuel. No burn. Just… force. What kind of cheat code is that?
He watched Theo disappear toward the medical wing, a new and volatile curiosity burning in his eyes. The game had changed. And Vance Kruger hated not being the strongest piece on the board.
Dykes Tucker’s eyes flicked from the scoring board showing Theo’s 399.0m back to the endless green of the training field. A fierce, competitive grin spread across his face.
“He’s fast,” Dykes said, not to anyone in particular. “But no way as fast as me.”
He turned and started walking—not toward the official runway, but backward, past the stunned students, past the markers, until he was a full 200 meters from the long jump pit.
“You want distance?” he muttered to himself, cracking his neck. “I’ll give you distance.”
The class watched in hushed confusion. Instructor Stan’s eyebrow lifted a fraction, but he didn’t intervene.
Dykes dropped into a sprinter’s crouch. For a moment, there was only the sound of the wind and the distant hum of the Spire.
He took a breath, focused, and exploded into motion.
100 meters per second.
He was a bullet, a human tracer round. The air ripped past him, howling. At the marked take-off line, he planted his lead foot and pushed, not for height, but to convert a fraction of his insane horizontal velocity into a shallow lift.
He didn’t sail. He achieved flight.
The long jump pit vanished beneath him in a blink. The 100-meter marker flashed by. Then 200. Then 300. He was a low-flying missile, a blur of motion against the green, the air screaming in his wake.
Gravity finally, reluctantly, pulled him down. He hit the grass at a shallow angle, not landing so much as skimming, tearing a fifty-meter scar in the pristine turf before tucking into a roll and coming to a stop.
He stood up, 485 meters from where he’d begun, speckled with grass and dirt, his PE uniform torn at the elbows. He brushed himself off, turned, and faced the silent, utterly stunned class. His smirk was pure, unadulterated triumph.
The field scanner beeped, lagging behind the reality it had just witnessed. A moment later, it projected the result in huge, glowing holographic numbers above the field:
TUCKER, D — 485.7m
Theo’s 399.0m record was not just broken. It was obliterated. Erased from the competition. This hadn’t been a long jump. It had been short-range ballistic travel.
Dykes jogged back at a normal human pace, not even winded. He stopped near where Theo was being supported by a proctor, his grin sharp but not cruel.
“That’s speed, dude,” Dykes said, giving a slight nod. “You’ve got one hell of a launch. But I’ve got range.”
The leaderboard updated, the gap so wide it looked like a system error:
1. Tucker — 485.7m
2. Griffin — 399.0m
3. Monita — 48.7m
Instructor Stan’s glass of water wasn’t frozen anymore—it was boiling, churning with a sudden surge of controlled thermal energy. His eyes were locked on the numbers, then on Dykes, then back at the ravaged strip of field.
“Tucker,” Stan called, his voice cutting through the collective awe. It was flat. Unimpressed. “Report to the maintenance office. You’re paying for the turf.”
Dykes’s triumphant smirk vanished. His mouth fell open. “What? I gotta pay for it? Sir, I don’t have that kind of money! It was part of the test!”
A beat of silence.
Then, a low, unexpected sound rumbled from Instructor Stan. A chuckle. It was dry, brief, and utterly surprising. The corners of his mouth twitched upward.
“I’m just messing with you,” Stan said, the boiling water in his glass settling back to a calm, cool liquid.
A wave of disbelief passed through the class. Someone whispered, too loud in the quiet, “He can make jokes?”
The spell of shock was broken, replaced by nervous laughter and relieved murmurs. The godlike display of power was suddenly, bizarrely, humanized by a teacher’s deadpan prank.
Dykes deflated, running a hand through his hair with a shaky laugh. “Oh, man. You got me, sir.”
Stan’s humor vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “The sentiment stands, Tucker. That was excessive, even for a demonstration. Control, not catastrophe, is the curriculum.” His gaze swept the class. “All of you, process what competition in this class actually means. It’s not about raw output. It’s about knowing when to use it, and what it costs.”
He looked at the scarred earth, then back at the leaderboard. Dykes had just redefined the scale. Theo had revealed a hidden depth. The lesson was clear: in Turboland, there were levels to this game. And some students played by entirely different rules of physics.
To Be Continued...
