The alarm shrieked like a dying animal.
Mateo jolted upright, his body protesting every movement. Around him, chaos erupted as six teenage boys scrambled to consciousness in various states of panic.
Henrik's wrist blade sang from its flesh sheath before his eyes were fully open, the sharp steel catching the harsh fluorescent light. "Attack?" he barked, scanning the room like a cornered animal.
Switch dropped into a combat stance, his knife materializing in his grip. His movements were controlled but ready—someone who'd learned to wake up prepared for trouble.
The contrast was stark. Ben groaned and rolled over, trying to bury his head under his pillow. Anon sat up peacefully, adjusting his glasses with the calm of someone who'd never been woken by explosions in the night.
But Fire simply sat up on his bottom bunk, red hair still perfectly styled despite sleep. No panic. No weapons. Just the controlled awareness of someone trained for this exact scenario.
Rich hero family, Mateo concluded, filing away the observation. Probably been doing emergency drills since he could walk.
The alarm cut off abruptly.
"Wake up, heroes of Atlas Academy." Commander Reeves' voice crackled through the intercom, sharp and unforgiving. "Your second day of training starts now."
Henrik's blade retracted with a snick, tension bleeding from his shoulders. "Hell of a wake-up call."
"Schedule's posted on the wall," Reeves continued. "Training center, 0800 hours. Don't be late."
Switch was already at the wall, reading aloud: "0600 to 0700, hygiene and breakfast. 0800 to 1300, combat and quirk training. 1300 to 1400, lunch break. 1400 to 1900, applied tactics training." He paused, checking his phone. "It's 0607. We've got fifty-three minutes."
Mateo grabbed his spare shirt—then stopped. Six sets of black uniforms lay folded at the foot of each bunk, crisp and clearly tailored.
"Academy colors," Anon observed, holding up the smallest set. "They must have measured us yesterday."
Mateo snatched his size and scanned the rest of the schedule. Thirteen hours of training with only one hour break. Then dinner, conditioning, and lights out at 2200.
He rushed to the bathrooms, the mirrors nothing like the cracked, warped glass in his old apartment. Mateo stared at his reflection: black uniform with three green stripes that matched his eyes, the AA logo emblazoned across his back and left breast pocket.
Two days ago, he'd been nobody. A failure who couldn't even get into Atlas on his own merit. Now he wore the colors of the most elite academy in the world.
So why did he still feel like a fraud?
"You planning to admire yourself all morning?" Fire's voice cut through his thoughts like a blade. The redhead stood behind him, uniform immaculate, expression cold as winter steel.
"Just—"
"Save it. You'll be late for training, and Reeves doesn't strike me as the forgiving type."
Fire was already walking away, dismissing him like he wasn't worth the effort. The casual arrogance stung more than any insult could have.
Breakfast was a blur of tasteless protein bars and synthetic juice wolfed down too quickly. Mateo barely registered the flavors, his mind racing ahead to what the day might bring. More tests? More ways to fail? More opportunities to prove he didn't belong here?
The training center doors opened onto a compound that stole his breath away. Open sky stretched endlessly above them, clouds close enough to touch. Far below, the city sprawled like a child's toy set.
Still can't believe this place floats.
"No time for sightseeing," Commander Reeves snapped, appearing beside him with that uncanny stealth. Her pale eyes held no warmth, only the sharp focus of someone who'd seen too much war. "Form up. We have work to do."
Class B assembled in a ragged line, some still blinking sleep from their eyes. The morning air carried a bite that cut through their uniforms, raising goosebumps along Mateo's arms.
Reeves studied them like a predator evaluating prey. When she spoke, each word carried absolute authority.
"Time is the one resource we cannot afford to waste. Yesterday's test showed us your raw potential. Today, we begin forging that potential into something useful." Her gaze swept across them, lingering on each face. "Your quirks are tools—currently dull, unfocused tools that wouldn't last five minutes in a real combat zone. We don't train heroes for the cameras. We train them to survive."
The training compound spread before them like a military obstacle course designed by someone with no concept of mercy. Massive concrete slabs sat waiting to be moved. Steel beams hung from mechanical arms. Target dummies lined one wall, their surfaces already scorched and dented.
"Pair off and find your stations," Reeves commanded. "Today we push past your comfort zones."
Mateo found himself assigned to what looked like a medieval torture device—two steel posts with a horizontal bar suspended twenty feet above the ground.
"Extended reach training," Reeves explained, appearing at his shoulder. "Show me what you learned yesterday."
Mateo forced a slime tendril from his right hand, the green substance stretching upward to wrap around the bar. The familiar tingle ran through his arm as his pores dilated, releasing the viscous fluid that had defined his quirk since childhood.
He pulled himself up using his arms, the slime acting as nothing more than a rope.
"No." Reeves' voice was sharp enough to cut steel. "Not with your arms, Mateo. We already know you're physically capable. This exercise challenges your quirk's strength."
Mateo glared at her, then at the tendril connecting him to the bar. "So what do you want me to do?"
"Pull yourself up with your power, not your muscles. I won't explain how—that's for you to figure out."
Around him, the others had begun their own training. Alex stood before a boulder the size of a small car, her dark hair pulled back in the same neat ponytail from yesterday. She extended her arm, and the massive rock slid backward as if pushed by an invisible giant. Then she clenched her fist and the boulder rolled forward again.
Push and pull, Mateo realized, watching the precise control in her movements. Only in one direction—wherever her arm points.
In the background, Henrik's arm morphed into gleaming steel as he struck targets with bell-like precision, while Alyssa's breath fogged a climate chamber with supernatural frost.
"Focus on your own training," Reeves called out, though her tone held more amusement than annoyance.
Mateo looked up at his tendril, studying the green substance that had always felt more like a burden than a gift. If he wanted to pull himself up without using his arms, he'd need to... retract it? Make it shorter?
He'd never tried absorbing that much slime back into his body. He concentrated, imagining the substance flowing back through his pores. The tendril began to contract, and suddenly he was rising—not from arm strength, but from the quirk itself pulling him upward.
"Again," Reeves said, her voice carrying the barest hint of approval.
Mateo let his slime extend again, lowering himself before contracting it to rise. The motion felt strange—like learning to use a muscle he'd never known existed. By his tenth repetition, his shoulders burned despite using his quirk instead of his muscles.
"Mateo." Reeves appeared beside him again, carrying an iron block. "Time for precision training. I want you to use your tendril as a flail."
She set the block down with a heavy thud. "Wrap around it, lift it, swing it at those targets. But I want accuracy, not just power. Hit each target in sequence, one through ten."
The targets rose from the floor like silent sentinels, spread across a wide area at varying heights and angles. Mateo extended his slime toward the iron block, wrapping the green substance around it like a tentacle.
The first swing nearly dislocated his shoulder. The block was heavier than it looked, and controlling the trajectory while it spun through the air required a completely different kind of focus. It constantly slipped from his tendril's grip, either barely moving or sliding free entirely.
"Think of it as an extension of your body," Reeves advised, her voice gentler than usual. "Not a tool you're using, but a limb you're moving."
It took him twenty tries to hit the first target. Thirty more to hit the second. Each failure felt like a weight added to his chest, especially when he glanced over and saw Alex effortlessly manipulating increasingly massive boulders, her face a mask of cool concentration.
Fire stood at his own station, flames streaming from his palms in perfectly controlled arcs that reached toward the sky. His technique was flawless, his power devastating and beautiful. Everything Mateo's quirk wasn't.
"Hey, Mateo!" Anon jogged over during a break, his sheep-wool hair damp with sweat. "I've been thinking about your quirk."
"Yeah?" Mateo replied, unsure how to feel about Anon's continued friendliness after yesterday's betrayal.
"Have you considered specialized equipment? I mean, you can generate slime under pressure, right? What if you had something that could multiply that force?"
Mateo paused mid-swing, the iron block pendulating to a stop. "What do you mean?"
Anon's eyes lit up behind his glasses. "Hydraulic gauntlets. You generate the slime into a pressurized chamber, and the hydraulic system amplifies the force. Instead of just shooting slime, you'd be delivering punches with hydraulic press strength."
"I don't know how to build that kind of stuff."
"You don't need to." Reeves appeared at their conversation, nodding with approval at Anon's suggestion. "I'll have the support gear team design something. Good analysis, Anon."
Anon beamed at the praise like the kid he looked like.
"But first—" She turned back to Mateo. "—finish your precision training. Equipment is useless without control."
By the time Reeves called for lunch break, Mateo had managed to hit seven out of ten targets in sequence. His shirt was soaked with sweat, his arms felt like overcooked pasta, and he was pretty sure he'd discovered muscles he didn't know existed.
As they filed toward the cafeteria, Alex fell into step beside him. Her dark eyes studied him with that same calculating intensity from yesterday.
"Not bad," she said finally, her voice matter-of-fact. "For someone who's still learning what his quirk can actually do."
It wasn't quite a compliment, but coming from her, it felt like one. Mateo found himself walking a little straighter.
But then Fire passed them, his red hair catching the artificial sunlight, and Mateo caught the slight shake of his head—a gesture that said everything about how far behind Mateo really was.
The afternoon session brought more of the same. More failures. More struggles with his awkward, off-putting power while others around him wielded abilities that belonged in comic books and hero documentaries.
By the time evening conditioning rolled around, Mateo's entire body ached in ways he'd never experienced. But the worst pain wasn't physical—it was the growing certainty that maybe, just maybe, he didn't belong here at all.
Maybe he couldn't achieve his brother's dream after all. Maybe he wasn't meant to avenge him.